Jekyll and Hyde
by TheGirlWithFarTooManyIdeas
Summary: Helen Potter lived in a house with a violent uncle until the day he died a sudden a violent death - one that Helen can't remember, despite being in the house at the same time. Battered and afraid, her mind had broken and invented something...or someone, to protect her. As the trail of blood and bodies follows in her wake, people will ask who is Sierra, and what did she do to Helen?
1. Chapter 1

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: Hello my lovely readers! Here's another story for your enjoyment - personally, I'm having a ball with this one. The rating is as it is for violence perpetrated by a very young person, blood/gore and mental illness. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 1: Psychosis**

Helen Potter had lived in fear her entire life.

Broken plates, unwashed floors, the slightest indiscretion resulted in the cupboard.

No food, no water, and no light.

She would be left in there for days until she thought she was going to die. She would see strange things while her throat burned, unable to distinguish them from the darkness that surrounded her.

She didn't know why her aunt and uncle were doing this to her – did she really deserve to see monstrous shapes in flashes of green light just because she had accidentally burned the bacon?

Her back hurt from being kicked and stomped on by Dudley's gang, her wrists hurt from being shoved against the oven during breakfast.

She lay curled up in a small ball, with nothing in the world to hold her up, the screaming and the curses of her family ringing in her ears.

It was that day that Helen's mind broke.

/

The young red haired girl slowly got out of the cupboard the next morning, her aunt shrieking for her to get over there and start preparing their breakfast. Her head was tilted down slightly, her face obscured by her unkempt hair.

She stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. Vernon Dursley, fat and unpleasant as ever, was sitting in his chair with his nose buried in the newspaper. Dudley was kicking the table, whining that he was _hungry _and wanted food _now_.

Petunia had just placed the frying pan on the burner and shot her niece a hateful glare before saying, "Get the bacon ready, girl."

The girl tilted her head, her bangs falling away from her eyes. Her green eyes flashed and hardened. "No." She said flatly.

Three heads whipped towards her and stared. Dudley stopped mid-kick, nearly falling off the chair onto his portly rear, mouth half open.

It wasn't because her tone and posture was completely different from the crying girl who had been flung into the cupboard nearly four days ago, and it wasn't because she had spontaneously developed an American accent – strange things had happened around that girl her entire life.

It was because she was defying them openly and without fear, despite the slightest mistake resulting in cruel and unusual punishments.

"What?" The girl snapped, stalking into the room and crossing her arms. "You have hands and a brain, don't you? If you do it, there's less of a chance of it getting burned. You know, that thing you threw a bitch fit about a few days ago?"

"_What did you just say, freak?_" Vernon started dangerously, his face beginning to turn purple.

"Are you deaf as well as stupid?" The girl scoffed, rolling her eyes. "That would explain a lot."

Vernon surged out of his chair and ran towards her, roaring, "_I will not be spoken to that way!_"

The girl smirked ever so slightly and she held up her hand.

Vernon smashed violently into an invisible wall and was flung backwards, his nose broken and bleeding. He crashed against the stove, sending the frying pan onto the floor and knocking the burner dial up. Petunia screamed.

The girl flicked her wrist to the right, and several kitchen knives exploded out of the drawer as though they had minds of their own. Dudley's mouth dropped open, a piece of bacon falling out before he started to wail.

As Vernon started to get up, two silver blurs whistled through the air heading straight for him. A horrible scream rent the air when they nailed his hands to the floor, slicing through bone and embedding themselves in the concrete floor.

Petunia ran for the back door only to find it locked. Desperately she threw her weight against it but it wouldn't budge. Dudley was screaming until another knife flung through the air and struck his shoulder, knocking him out of his chair and splattering blood on the pretty white walls.

"Why not?" The girl asked sarcastically, staring down at her uncle. The table was rattling and so was the pots and pans on the counter top. The entire room seemed to be trembling in anticipation. "I'm a freak...I don't have to listen to you..."

Vernon couldn't even say anything; he was busy whimpering and choking in pain as blood began to pool in his mouth.

Petunia, having abandoned her attempt to escape, had taken one of the knives from the floor and was trying to creep up on her niece. Seeing her out of the corner of her eye, the girl sent one of the chairs flying and struck the woman right at her bony hip, throwing her against the wall.

_CRACK! _The sound of a bone breaking was followed by a scream as Petunia Dursley writhed on the floor.

Dudley had gotten up again, and completely ignoring the positions his parents were in threw himself at the girl who he had beaten up many times before. The girl's facial expression didn't change, but a fleeting look of amusement flashed by her eyes before his clothes suddenly caught fire.

Dudley howled and proceeded to do the single smartest thing he'd ever considered – he dropped to the ground and rolled over several times until the flames were smothered. But by then there were crude burns on his chest and shoulders, and he was so weak he could only gasp when the girl stepped on his back and over him as she lazily waved one hand in the direction of the sink.

One of the pipes exploded, spraying water all over the floor. The girl stood silently in the middle of the room, looking coldly down at her three tormenters who were now bloody and helpless on the floor.

"H...H..." Petunia choked, searching wildly for a way to salvage the situation that she was in. She was more afraid in that moment then she had been at any other point in her life. "...Helen..."

The girl spun on her heel and snarled like an animal, eyes blazing. "That's not my fucking name!" She bit out. "Helen was left to die. You killed her the day you threw her, begging and crying, into that shithole cupboard."

The toaster was abruptly ripped off the counter and dangled above the water pooling next to her incapacitated aunt. Petunia's eyes widened and she began to scramble backwards as her niece's rage filled the entire room.

"I'm not Helen. She isn't home."

The toaster dropped into the water. Sparks burst across the floor. Petunia's body thrashed and twitched as she let out one final scream before dropping dead.

The girl – she would come to call herself Sierra – turned her attention back towards Vernon.

The man had managed to pull free of the knives without ripping his hands off, surprisingly enough. He crawled over to the body of his wife while Dudley just sat on the ground in shock.

As she stepped around the table, Vernon shook his wife's shoulder and then turned to stare up at her. "You killed her," He choked out.

"I did," Sierra scoffed. "Consider that repayment for how you've treated me. You left me in that cupboard; if I hadn't woken up and gotten some water I would be the corpse now."

"You...vicious...little monster..." Vernon snarled out, stumbling to his feet to have another go at her.

"I am." Sierra agreed, raising her hand again. Vernon began to choke, both hands going to his throat which inexplicably felt as though it was being crushed by cords. "But if it means that you will never hurt me again, then yes, I will be a monster."

Vernon's face turned green, then purple, and finally there was a cracking noise and he slumped to the ground.

Sierra shook her head slightly, lip twitching into something that was almost a smile of relief.

A moment later, she chuckled, placing her head in one hand. She started laughing and crying, a sharp staccato sound of both joy and relief from someone who had never felt hope.

Dudley began to wail again, because he finally understood the totality of what had just happened.

Sierra walked over to him briskly and grabbed his collar. Turning around, she walked down the hall dragging the screaming boy behind her.

The door to the cupboard flew open and Sierra tossed him in, violently kicking him in the stomach to push him to the back. She glared into the small space that had been her prison, her lip curling into something between a smirk and a frown.

"Don't worry, the police will come and get you. Eventually." She said quietly as she slammed the door shut and locked it tight.

She stood in front of the cupboard in silence for a few minutes. Then, her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell to the ground in a dead faint.

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The first thing Helen heard were the sirens. She slowly propped herself up on her elbows and blinked as the bright red and blue lights brought her back to consciousness.

How had she gotten outside? Helen tried to think, but all she remembered was the small, confined space of the cupboard. Her head hurt, too. Had something just happened?

She was sure something had happened, but there was a blank space in her memory. And it felt recent, too – something she should remember, but didn't.

Her hands felt sticky. Helen blinked the stars out of her eyes and looked down at the ground.

Her pale skin was spotted with red, warm blood. Blinking in confusion, Helen rubbed at her hands. Slowly she stood up and look around, seeing policemen wandering about, talking to each other and pointing.

"Helen Potter?"

The young girl jumped and turned around, coming face to face with a grave-looking officer – the deputy of the area, her uncle had said once. She only recognized him from the TV.

"Yes sir?"

"We found you unconscious inside the house, what happened there? What or who did you see?" The man asked briskly, pausing only when the girl's only response was to stare uncomprehendingly at her.

"...I see. You must have been unconscious the entire time."

"Um...sir?" Helen asked timidly. Usually questions resulted in at least a smack or a barbed comment, but the man didn't move. "What-What happened? I-I'm not sure...I don't..."

The impassive look on the man's face shifted into pity at this. "I'm really sorry. Your aunt and uncle are dead. They were killed two days ago. We found you and your cousin inside the house...though he had to be taken straight to the hospital..."

The world seemed to tilt around Helen as she listened, the man's voice sounding like it was coming from very far away.

Her aunt and uncle, dead...dead...dead...

A flash of blood red burst before her eyes, the feeling of steel flashed under her fingers and a violent chill seized her all of a sudden, as though she had been dropped into cold water.

_-if it means you'll never hurt me again-_

The pain in her head suddenly started acting up – as if she had been struck by the frying pan again. Helen doubled over and clutched her head, whimpering as the deputy barked at nearby medics who gently lead the hyperventilating girl into the ambulance.

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Helen had the nagging suspicion something was wrong with her that no one wanted to believe.

The nurses had assured her that she wasn't seriously hurt – she hadn't been concussed when she fainted and while she was undernourished it was nothing dangerous yet. But two days had rolled by and they still hadn't let her out of the hospital yet.

The police had come back and asked her a whole bunch of questions – if her aunt and uncle had any enemies, what she had seen that day, things like that. She had been very frightened, especially when one of the younger cops started looking murderous when she mentioned the cupboard.

Strangely, they didn't seem to suspect her of doing anything; one of the cops even patted her on the head before leaving the room.

Then another guy came in to see her – a funny guy dressed in white who started asking her really intense questions. He asked why she didn't remember anything and he kept asking her about her family. Helen had been too nervous and confused to tell him anything, even after he said soothingly that her uncle was gone and couldn't hurt her anymore.

When he said that, a brief flash of red blinded Helen again. She shrieked in surprise and fear, causing an nurse to come in.

The other man spoke to her for a moment in a hushed voice. When she asked what was going on, the nurse explained that they were deciding where she was going to stay.

Helen was still confused when she was lead to a black car and driven into the countryside. The man explained that she wound be staying here until they could find a guardian to look after her.

Helen thought the place looked like Petunia and Vernon's house – very clean, very posh, tight locks on doors people didn't want kids to open. There were a few other kids there, but they didn't seem very talkative – one of them, in fact, seemed to be lost in her own world when Helen tried to make conversation with her.

Though she swore that one of the older boys had done nothing but stare at her from the moment she walked in the door.

A stern, very Marge-like woman shunted her into a sparsely decorated room and closed the door. Helen slowly placed her meagre bag on the floor and sank down on the bed. The emotional stress of the day eventually caught up with her and she fell asleep.

She didn't notice she had a shadow.

**Later that Night**

Helen had another Blank Space when the boy came into her room that night.

There was something in his expression that scared her; it kind of looked like _that thing _she had seen when Petunia had sent her to being uncle Vernon his coffee a few months ago. She had walked into his room to find him with a mournful-looking woman bent over his desk, licking his lips as though he was about to eat a course of bacon.

He had broken her nose and threatened to throw her in a ditch for the racoons if she breathed a word of what she had seen there to anyone.

But when the blank space ended, she was sitting at the other end of the room, curled up and resting her head against her knees. When she looked up, the boy was hanging from the ceiling, a cable wrapped around his neck.

Helen didn't know what the Blank Spaces meant. She didn't voice her confusion to anyone – she had long been trained not to speak what was inside her head – and someone that young wouldn't know what had happened to her mind. All she knew was that some of the other children feared her, and they all looked at her sometimes as if they were seeing someone else.

The flashes came too, sometimes. The flashes of red, feeling like she was holding something cold or sharp, things like that. They scared her because they seemed to come at random, and she never understood what they meant.

Helen, though she did not know it, was not alone inside her head.

**A few weeks Later**

Sierra stepped into her room, the door slamming shut behind her on its own.

She frowned when she caught sight of a letter sitting neatly on her desk. No one wrote to her, unless it was a prank – even back with the Dursleys Dudley didn't think her worth the time and effort required for something like that, and the kids here had realized in short order how stupid that would be.

Stalking over to it, she picked it up and opened it.

"...Dear Helen Potter, what the hell, that's not my name...you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. ...What the fuck is this shit?"

Dropping the letter onto the desk, Sierra was distracted by a hoot. An owl was sitting on her windowsill.

A fucking owl, miles from any sort of dense forest where their kind lived.

"...I'm going to strangle Roger with the piano wire if this is him again," Sierra growled, picking up a forgotten book and chucking it at the bird. "Get lost, there aren't any mice here."

Ignoring the angry hooting, Sierra got up and started pacing around her small room. "Magic, what a load of...but wait a minute, I've had weird shit happen around me a lot that just doesn't happen to anyone else. Glass disappears, doors and windows move on their own, not to mention I can chuck knives around with my brain. I figured I had gotten Carrie White syndrome, but what if its magic?"

A short pause, and then she smacked herself on the forehead and laughed unsteadily, "Oh fuck me, I can't believe I'm actually considering that. Roger is right, I am fucked in the head."

Turning on her heel, Sierra continued to pace. "Minerva McGonagall...really, who names their child that in the modern age...ugh, this is so irritating. I can't imagine which of these inmates would be dumb enough to prank me at this point."

Another hoot. That damned owl wasn't taking the hint. Sierra spun around and stabbed it with a fearsome glare. "Go _away_!" She snarled. The glass in the open window shattered, causing the bird to let out a frightened squawk before finally flying away into the distance.

Huffing, the girl walked over to her bed and flopped down on it, her tangled red hair crashing down over her face.

She thought that was the end of it – unfortunately for her, and a number of other people, some old men can be very stubborn.

**A Few Hours Later**

Sierra wasn't much of a deep sleeper, unlike Helen – the other girl slept like a stone whenever she was allowed to. Sierra was always on edge, reacting to the slightest thing that affected what little temper she possessed.

So when her door opened in the middle of the night, she jumped straight to her feet, rapidly blinking the sleep out of her eyes to see an enormous bearded man standing in her doorway.

"Hello, Helen!" The man said cheerfully, either not noticing or choosing to ignore the expression on the girl's face. "Las' time I saw you, yeh were only a baby!"

"...Who the fuck are you." Sierra said, her brain catching on the 'I saw you as a baby' part of the sentence. That strange comment delayed her usual reaction skills for a moment. "You have five seconds to get out of here before I start screaming, you crazy child molester."

The giant's eyes widened. He started to say something else, but Sierra was not about to entertain the ramblings of a giant, strange man she had never seen before. She mentally counted down to five, giving the stranger a very Kubrician look, before making her decision.

She was a survivor, and she put self preservation before anything else.

"WHO ARE YOU? GO AWAY, I DON'T KNOW YOU, HOW DID YOU GET INTO MY ROOM! GET AWAY! SOMEBODY HELP ME!" She shrieked in an impressive attempt to mimic Helen's frightened cry.

The people who looked after them responded in record time – they all liked Helen, because Helen was the only one they ever saw.

Helen was sweet and meek and kind and everything that Sierra wasn't.

Sierra didn't experience anything that Helen did. She just listened to people talking about her. The kids who whispered about how she changed from terrified to furious in a split second, how one side of her came out to haunt them whenever they stepped out of line.

They whispered that sometimes. Mostly, they talked about how sweet and doormat-like the girl was – how she shared her food, always went last during games so everyone else had fun, how she smiled shyly at everyone.

Sierra didn't get why they thought that girl was her. She wasn't sweet. She was angry and hateful and bitter, she felt all the sorrow and rage that had haunted her while she lived with her brutal uncle.

The flames of her rage over that mistreatment, her hatred of her evil uncle, shrewish aunt and spoiled cousin. The resentment and the fear taught her that she didn't deserve what happened to her. The sorrow and the suffering allowed her to realize that she needed to destroy the things that threatened her, made her feel that way.

They had given her strength in the pitch darkness of the cupboard.

They allowed her to stand tall instead of cower.

They told her that her life was worth doing anything to preserve, if not for her then for the woman that died in her dreams begging for her child's life.

She pressed her back against the wall while one of the simpering nurses tried to comfort her, whispering apologies and promising that it would never happen again. The crazy bearded man was herded out of the building.

People say that hatred makes you weak. Sierra knew that was bullshit. If it wasn't for her hate, she never would have escaped uncle Vernon. But she hated, and now he would never hurt her again.

Whoever Helen was, she wasn't able to do that. Sierra, as she collapsed back into bed, wondered how the other girl was still alive.

**A Week Later**

It was Helen who Professor McGonagall met after Hagrid's disastrous attempt to get her the Hogwarts Acceptance Letter.

In retrospect, perhaps it would have given them better perspective of what they were in store for if she had met Sierra instead. Then again, despite having a hospital for it the wizarding world seemed to possess a very medieval attitude towards mental illness – some of which they doubted the existence of.

The nurses initially weren't keen on letting Helen go anywhere with a woman who claimed to be a witch, but after much arguing the professor cast a slight compulsion charm on them, at which point they agreed to release her from the orphanage's care.

Helen entered Diagon Alley, finally knowing the truth about her parents, most importantly the truth that they died for her.

Late that night, Sierra lay awake in bed for a long time, turning over this new truth about her parents. Then, she pulled out a blank sheet of paper and wrote the title of a list on it.

The list was blank for now. But soon enough, there would be names on the page – and the terrible things that had always followed her would begin to spread.

**End Chapter**

**Well, what do you think? Please review and let me know!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: And I'm back! Here for further Helen/Sierra antics! Nobody looses their tongue this chapter, unfortunately, but given what canon!Harry's life was like, you can probably expect that to change soon! I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 2: Duality**

Sierra hated other children.

Of course, you'd be much faster writing down a list of things Sierra _liked _then trying to track down all the things she hated. Other children, however, tended to be the first thing she felt should be locked up somewhere or muzzled so she didn't have to deal with their whiny idiocy.

Granted Sierra was mentally sixteen, as opposed to Helen's stunted eleven, and possessed a wide berth of anger issues, but there were a scarce few other children at the House that threatened to carve tongues out if sufficiently pissed off.

Strangely enough, despite her sharp tongue Sierra often didn't go through with the threat especially if the kid was very young. Kids her age, however, were shown no such pity.

They either threatened her, feared her, or just made nuisances out of themselves when she was trying to get through a day.

Sierra preferred it when they avoided her.

The white-haired boy standing next to her in the Robe shop was giving her no such levity, and her hands twitched on the fabric she was considering wrapping around his neck as he babbled on about 'proper' families and how the 'other sort' shouldn't be going to school.

_Fuck my life. _Sierra thought bitterly. _I finally get rid of my whale of a cousin, and he's immediately replaced by a bleach-blonde copycat with a rich, influential daddy. _

She refused to engage him, staring angrily at the mirror until the childish store owner finally let her go, having found her size. The boy was still yelling at her for ignoring him when she left the building.

People followed her and pointed at her and tried to get a look at the scar on her forehead. Sierra glared stormily at all of them as she followed McGonagall listlessly through the town, picking up supplies for her new school.

The older woman was thoroughly unnerved by her utter refusal to react to anything. Sierra could feel her staring whenever her back was turned.

_Okay, fine. So magic is real, and all the belting uncle Vernon did whenever the -m- word came up was completely pointless. Why are you expecting me to gape all day like a moron after I got over the initial shock? _

The initial shock, of course, involved a lot of swearing and wondering what had been put in her breakfast. But since you couldn't deny that the lion standing in front of you had definitely been a table a second ago, she came around to the fact fairly quickly afterwards.

"What were you expecting when you found me in a hospital? Some kind of _normal_ child?"She asked eventually, turning around to face the professor.

McGonagall looked taken aback. "I beg your pardon?" She said, plainly not used to being spoken to in such a way.

"You've done nothing but stare at me as if there's a tree growing out of my head this entire time," Sierra growled out. "I don't know what anyone told you about me, but what the kids mutter about at night is true. I have my ways of handling life, and I don't particularly care what people think of it."

McGonagall straightened up, her nose flaring. "I apologize if I have unnerved you," She said stiffly. "I was merely lost in thought – I knew both your parents when they were in school. You look just like your mother...except for your eyes."

Sierra blew a strand of stray hair away from her face. "What about my eyes?" She asked coldly.

McGonagall didn't answer directly. "Perhaps it was merely my imagination." She said.

"Probably," Sierra muttered. The scream from her oldest nightmare echoed in her ears. Now she knew what it was. It was her mother begging her murderer to spare her only child, and dying for her troubles. Her mother was willing to love a monster like her enough to die for her. There was no bigger joke in the world then that. "I'm not my mother. I could never be her."

"There's no need for that tone, miss Potter." McGonagall snapped, that same unnerved expression that all people had when she entered a room crossing her face. "You're almost done here, then I'll be showing you to Platform 9 and 3/4s. For now, we're going to get you an owl."

"I'm not really good with animals."

"It will be your means of communication with family and friends while at school."

"I don't have any friends." Sierra said briskly. "The people who were, in the strictest definition of the term, 'family' are either dead or long gone into the foster system. I don't have friends either. Isn't that normal for someone like me?"

McGonagall turned around, looking thoroughly alarmed. "Why...of course not! Why would you think such a thing?"

Sierra's response was the same stone-cold glare she gave Vernon Dursley before she killed him, before turning and walking down the pathway to the pet shop.

She refused to speak to her guide for the rest of the day, despite the woman's increased attempts to get her to talk.

_You mean I'm your super-special heroine who's supposed to save the day and you didn't even keep an eye on me while I lived in that shithole? You did nothing for me and expect me to do things for you? _

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Professor McGonagall eventually gave up, leaving a nervous Helen standing on the platform with a trunk and a fluffy grey kitten named Maria. There were so many people here! They were all children like her...people who could use magic.

Helen had never felt so alone in a crowd. She watched parents kiss their children and shout encouragement as they stepped onto the train. The other kids were laughing and enjoying themselves. A twinge of envy rolled Helen's stomach.

_I wish that could have been me...if someone out there could love a freak like me._

Sighing, Helen stepped onto the train. As usual, she made her way to the very back of the vehicle, huddled into the last compartment and closed the door behind her.

Helen pulled her legs up against her chest and stared out the window as the whistle blew and the train left the station. She didn't know where she was going – the last thing she remembered before her latest Blank Space was being told who had killed her mother and the terrible war that had been going on before that happened.

She just hoped that it would be better then what she was leaving behind.

She pulled the first Lord of the Rings book out of her trunk and opened it to her last stopping point. Leaning her head against the window, she began to trace Frodo's journey from the gates of Rivendell to the depths of Moria.

At some point – she was never good at keeping track of time – the compartment door opened. Helen flinched and immediately stood up. A boy was standing in the doorway, looking nervous when he realized the compartment had another person in it.

"Hello," He said shyly. He had red hair several shades lighter then Helen's and brown eyes. He was dressed in hand-me-downs just like her, and there was a rat in his pocket. "Do you mind? I mean, everywhere else is full."

Helen looked at him for a moment before uncertainly responding, "Okay."

Smiling in relief – Helen flushed, she didn't get smiled at often – the boy sat down on the other couch and said, "I'm Ron Weasley." He held out his hand.

Helen ducked her head slightly, tentatively reaching out and shaking his hand. "I'm Helen. Helen Potter."

Ron's mouth dropped open. "Helen Potter...? You mean, like...the girl who lived?"

Helen squeaked at the sudden scrutiny, her hair falling down in front of her face as she shed away from the boy.

"I mean," Ron backtracked a bit at her obvious nervousness, "I didn't expect you to be..." He gestured around the compartment. "I didn't think you'd be by yourself."

"I just didn't want attention," Helen responded meekly, raising her head again. "I mean...I'm not special or anything, it was just...just something that happened a long time ago. I – I don't even remember it that well..."

Ron sat back in his chair, and evidently decided a change of subject was in order. "Do you know which house you're going to get sorted into?" He asked. "My whole family's been in Gryffindor, 'cept myself and my little sister Ginny."

Helen's look of confusion prompted him to explain what the four houses were. Helen admitted she wasn't sure about the houses – she figured she was probably destined for Hufflepuff, which seemed to be the leftovers of the Wizarding World.

"Well, I wouldn't call them _leftovers_," Ron said, looking a little embarrassed. "I mean, they're the house of good will and hard work and stuff like that. It isn't bad to go there. Besides, better that then Slytherin."

Helen bit her lip. "Are all the Slytherins mean?" She asked.

"A lot of Dark wizards have come out of Slytherin," Ron informed her solemnly. "And they probably won't like you much, because You-Know-Who was a Slytherin too, and you stopped him."

"So not Slytherin then," Helen decided. She smiled shyly at her new friend – could she call him a friend? "Thank you."

Ron smiled back.

The door snapped open and Helen jumped slightly. Standing in the doorway was a blonde haired boy and two burly kids who looked like guards.

"So it's true," The boy dawled, "The great Helen Potter has returned to the wizarding world."

He stepped inside, looking very important, and looked down at her. "I think you'll find that some families are better then others," He said with a contemptuous look at Ron.

"What's that supposed to mean?!" Ron demanded, but Draco completely ignored him, focusing his attention on Helen.

"I'd be more then willing to ignore the snub you sent me in Madam Malkins," He stuck out his hand. "You've obviously been raised by barbarians. I'd be more then happy to correct that."

Helen flattened herself against the wall, scared. She wasn't sure what the boy's ideological babbling was about, but it sounded a lot like a threat. Helen, as she often did when faced with threats, retreated into the depths of her psyche.

Sierra blinked her eyes a few times, surprised at how soon she was back in the driver's seat. "Leave her alone," A red-haired boy was saying to the blonde from the shop, standing protectively in front of her. "Muggles aren't barbarians."

"You would think, wouldn't you Weasl?" The blonde sneered. "Your family doesn't care that they've stooped down to the mud...muggle houses are probably palaces compared to what your family is used to."

"Fuck off, blondie," Sierra said dangerously, turning her head and stabbing him with a glare.

Both boys turned around and stared at her. "What did you just say to me?" The blonde demanded.

"Fuck. Off. Are you deaf?" Sierra responded, getting to her feet and walking up to him. The boy's eyes widened and he took several steps back until he was flattened against the wall. "Listen here, you insipid little twerp, I put up with your inane, self-satisfied prattling at the shop because I couldn't cut your tongue out in front of dozens of witnesses."

"You can't talk to me like that," The blonde sputtered.

Sierra violently pushed him against the wall, causing his wand to fall to the floor. "What's gonna stop me?" She asked with poisonous sweetness. "If it's fine for you to threaten him-" She jerked her head towards Ron, "It's just fine for me to threaten you, wouldn't you say?"

Dropping him against the ground again, she said, "Get the fuck out of here before I throw you out." She snapped. "The next time you start spouting Neo-Nazi tripe around me, I break your fucking nose. Okay?"

The boy stared at her. "Good. I'm glad we understand each other," Sierra said, not waiting for his response. She slammed the door in his face.

Once he was gone, Helen returned as suddenly as she had left. She turned towards Ron, who was looking at her with awe. "What?" She asked nervously.

"You made Malfoy back down!" Ron said, amazed. "_Malfoy!"_

"Is...is that a bad thing?" Helen asked timidly, not wanting to tell her new friend that she had just experienced a Blank Space.

"No," Ron shook his head. "That was _cool_. People like Malfoy think they're better then everyone else just because they have 'pure blood'. My dad told me about him; his father works at the Ministry and he knows he supported You-Know-Who back in the day."

"He did?" Helen whispered.

"Yeah, before you stopped him." Ron said. He looked really impressed, which caused Helen to blush and look down at her shoes. "Where'd you learn those words?"

"Which words?"

"Fuck," Ron answered, his brow furrowing. "What does that even mean?"

Helen went bright red. "Um..." She had heard some of the other kids in the hospital using it, and while she knew what it meant she couldn't believe she had actually said it aloud.

"It's a bad word, isn't it?" Ron asked. Helen nodded. "I better not tell my mum I learned it, then."

Helen giggled uncertainly, but Ron smiled back. And so her first real friendship began.

**Later**

Helen was intimidated by Hogwarts.

She and Ron had ended up sharing a boat with a girl named Hermione Granger, who was hailing her with all sorts of information on the building as Professor McGonagal lead them and the rest of the first years inside. Ron didn't seem to like Hermione that much, but Helen was incredibly grateful for the distraction.

While waiting in line to get sorted, Helen looked around. The four tables were exactly as Ron had told them they would be, with the Slytherin table on the far left. She glanced at it. A couple students there were giving her dark looks. She shivered and turned her attention to the front table.

The headmaster – an old man with a really long beard like Santa Clause – was sitting in the middle. Two seats away from him was a black cloaked man who was staring at her. Something about his unreadable expression made Helen nervous, so she stared at her feet until she was jolted out of her reviere by a voice calling her name.

"Potter, Helen!" The hat shouted. Whispers started all over the hall as Helen nervously made her way up to the stool, fiddling with a few strands of her red hair along the way.

When the hat was placed over her head, everything was quiet for a moment. Helen let out a little shriek when a voice in her head said _ah...what is this? You...this isn't just one mind._

Helen slapped a hand over her mouth, her heart pounding. _Take it easy, child, I'm the Sorting Hat._

**_What the fuck is this? _**Another voice joined them. A voice that was slightly older then Helen's, and yet sounded very similar. **_Who are you? How the hell are you in here with me?_**

_Who's that? _Helen thought, frightened.

_There seem to be... _The hat pondered for a moment, before uncertainly declaring, _You are not possessed, and yet...there are two people inhabiting this body – yourself, and this other girl._

_**Sierra! SI-ERR-A! That fat bastard and vicious bitch called me GIRL! Nobody calls me that now! **_The other voice raged, causing Helen to flinch.

_W-Who are you? How are you in my head? _Helen asked, scared.

_**I don't fucking know...wait a minute...you're Helen, aren't you? **_The other girl's voice demanded. **_You're the one those nurses thought was me!_**

_That is the other person living in your body. _The hat said, sounding hushed and worried. _I'm not sure how this is possible without possession, but the two of you are coexisting almost harmoniously._

_W-What does that mean? _Helen shuddered violently on the chair.

_**...Hey. Have you ever had moments where you don't know how you got somewhere? Like there are big chunks missing in your memory?**_

_How...wait...you mean the Blank Spaces? Y-You mean...w-whenever I have a Blank Space...you're walking around in my body? _Helen's head was beginning to hurt a lot.

_**It's the only thing that makes sense to me, **_The other girl – Sierra – answered.

_It is the only explanation. _The hat agreed. _Two souls cannot control the same body at the same time. While one rests in the depths of the psyche, the other takes charge...to be in the driver's seat, if you will._

_**...That is fucking creepy. Do you mindrape every little kid you come into contact with? Is this even legal? **_Sierra demanded.

_No, no, of course not. I am part of Hogwarts, and the school is not meant to hurt children._

_**Oh sure, because not 'meaning' to hurt someone and actually hurting someone are **_**totally ****_mutually exclusive. _**Sierra scathed. Helen felt a fierceness and...almost protective feeling wash over her.

_I swear I mean you no harm, _The hat said. _I was simply put here to see what house you should be in._

_C-Couldn't we just have taken a personality test? _Helen whimpered. _This is scary!_

_**Calm down, will you? The more you freak out, the longer this is gonna take. **_Sierra said, her tone less aggressive, more matter-of-fact. **_Just grit your teeth and think of it like taking off a bandaid. If he does anything funny, I'll rip out his fuzzy guts. _**

_O...Okay. _Helen thought, straightening up and bracing herself the way she always did when cleaning or bandaging scars.

_Er...understood, _The hat said, sounding worried. _Let's see...oh, Merlin..._

_**Hey! Stay away from there! Those are our memories!**_

"GRYFFINDOR!" The hat bellowed. Helen jerked when the table on the far right burst into applause, making her realize they had heard the hat's pronouncement too. Quickly she stood up and hurried over to the table where Hermione was sitting, not noticing the concerned looks being shared between McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore.

Her head was spinning. There was someone else inside her head! Her thoughts swirled at the concept. Judging by the hat's reaction, that wasn't something that happened to a lot of people. That must be why the man in the coat had sent her to the hospital to live! How had he figured it out, and why hadn't he told her?

Helen didn't have long to brood on those questions; after the Headmaster gave his (bizarre) opening words, the tables had been covered with all sorts of delicious looking food! Helen had never once before had enough to eat to fill her belly, so she tucked in, giving herself two servings of desert as well.

She wondered if Sierra tasted anything when she was eating. She felt guilty all of a sudden; she should find a way to let the other girl eat desert the next day. Ron was sorted into Gryffindor too, which was nice. It would be easier to stay friends this way.

**That Evening**

Helen put her trunk down at the foot of her bed, which was next to Hermione's. It was strange, sharing a room with other girls. Everyone back in the hospital slept in separate bunks. This setting was strange and alien feeling, but not wholly uncomfortable.

As Helen lay down in bed, she wondered if she had finally found a place she could call her home. She wondered if Sierra would like it too. If they lived in the same body, did that make them sisters? Helen tried to remember when her first Blank Space was.

She guessed it was back with the Dursleys, who she tried not to think about because the memories were so painful. But why would Sierra be in her head, instead of having a body of her own? That didn't seem very fair.

And where was Sierra before the Blank Spaces?

Helen rolled over, rubbing her head against the soft pillows to try and drive the thoughts away. Now, all she wanted to do was sleep. After all, she did have school tomorrow!

But there was something in the air that kept her ever so slightly on edge... a faint feeling of malice. _It's just my imagination, _Helen told herself, but she fell asleep with a sense of dull fear in her gut. There was something wrong with this school.

**End Chapter**

**And next time, Hermione is nearly killed by a troll, Sierra goes medieval on Draco for causing it, and a mirror breaks.**

**Read and Review please!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Tyene: You've got a twisted mind, you know that?**

**Wanda: (shrugs while shuffling scripts) If it isn't broken, don't fix it.**

**Tyene: ...And if it is broken? I'm pretty sure it is.**

**Wanda: Then I'll just have to take it out on someone, won't I, Draco? (laughs) I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 3: Brutality**

Helen wasn't sure whether to welcome Hogwarts with open arms, or to run away and hide.

She couldn't escape all the stares, pointing fingers and whispers behind her back. She was very aware of them, and thus more vulnerable then she would have been otherwise.

Thank god for Hermione. Her bookish nature and fact-spewing was natural student repellant.

It was a rather shallow assessment of their current relationship – Helen did appreciate Hermione talking about all these things, primarily because it made her feel normal. The girl did get rather bossy at times, often causing Helen to flinch away from her, but when she realized this she apologized. Their companionship, which Helen was only tentatively dubbing a friendship, was something strange, alien and yet comforting.

Ron didn't like Hermione that much, which Helen thought was a pity – it would have been nice if her two new friends could get along better.

Hermione's intelligence and quick understanding of spells made Ron feel inferior, especially since he had grown up with magic all his life. Helen told him that Hermione wasn't trying to make him feel bad, she was just gifted.

Magic was beautiful. This, more then anything else, made Helen feel somewhat at home in this strange, frightening new place. Magic was easy for her; it felt like a flowing river in her mind. All she had to do was dip her hand in and incredible things happen.

Several weeks in with little incident (aside from Sierra threatening bloody murder on a boy who called Hermione mudblood) and Helen was still amazed by things Ron seemed to find mundane. But he never condescended her, he patiently explained stuff she didn't understand and told her about the history of magic whenever she asked.

Helen was nervous on Halloween morning. She didn't have any good memories of this night, especially those from back when she had lived with her uncle and aunt. It also didn't help that Draco Malfoy was as nasty as ever in that class, calling Hermione mudblood again and repeatedly insulting her until she finally fled the room in tears.

Dinner had run around and Helen was getting worried, was Hermione still in the bathroom? Another girl in their year, Lavander had said she was crying there. Finally deciding this had been long enough, Helen got up, muttered an explanation to Ron and hurried off in the direction of the bathroom.

It didn't take her long to find, thankfully. Helen gently pushed the door open and asked, "Hermione?"

A sniffle answered her. Helen walked in and found Hermione leaning against one of the stall doors. Obviously she had been crying for some time; her eyes were red and puffy.

Helen knelt down next to her and said, "C'mon, Hermione, please come out for dinner. I'm worried about you."

Hermione looked tearfully at her. "I've never had a friend before you Helen," She confessed sadly. "No one has liked me before, because I've always been too smart. I hoped things would be different here, but..." She closed her eyes as a fresh wave of tears flooded forth.

Helen tentatively offered Hermione her hand. When the girl took it, she said, "Don't listen to Draco, Hermione. He's just a big, stupid jerk. You're my first real friend and there's nothing muddy about you. I bet he's just insecure 'cause you're smarter then him."

"R-Really?"

Helen nodded. "Uh-huh. I was really nervous when I came here, because I've never been to a school this big...but you just talked to me and helped me through it! That's worth a dozen Malfoy's, I think."

Hermione wiped the tears away from her eyes and smiled weakly. "Its very nice of you to try and cheer me up." She was about to say something else when she paused. "What's that smell?"

Helen blinked. She sniffed and was immediately batted around the head with a horrid stench comparable to Vernon's oldest woollen socks. She put a hand over her nose, stood up and turned around.

Both girls found themselves staring up at a giant mountain troll.

%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;&amp;%%&amp;%&amp;

Sierra reacted instantly. She grabbed Hermione and tackled her to the other side of the bathroom, just as the troll brought its club down on the spot they had been standing on moments before. It swung again, clumsily, shattering half the stalls along the way but thankfully still missing them.

Hermione screamed in terror. Quickly Sierra stood up and faced the monster. She looked for something she could use as a weapon and came upon two pieces of wood, broken from the stalls.

Sierra felt the great wave of power in her just like when she had fought off Vernon. She reached out with both hands and concentrated, thinking of her lesson earlier that day. Except this time, she wasn't looking for a needle.

The two wooden pieces transformed into iron pikes. Sierra flinched when the troll clubbed the shield she had set up, nearly knocking her over. Thrusting her hands forward, she sent the pikes flying through the air.

One rammed itself through the troll's neck and came out the other side. The other one embedded itself deeply into its chest, cutting into its heart. Blood sprayed everywhere, coating Sierra and pooling on the floor as the troll fell down dead.

A wave of vertigo crashed over Sierra, causing her to stumble. _Damn it! Why does this still make me so tired? _She wondered.

A whimper caught her attention. Hermione was staring up at her in disbelief. Slowly Sierra got down on her knees and pulled the other girl into a hug. Normally Sierra despised getting touched, punching out anyone who did so without permission, but even she could see that Hermione needed comfort after almost being turned into a bloody pancake.

Hermione began to openly cry as she clutched Sierra's shoulders, the shock finally catching up to her. Sierra's fingers tightened when she remembered _why _Hermione had been in here when this troll arrived.

_Malfoy had done it_.

Footsteps. Sierra looked up to see Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape and Professor Quirrel all hurry into the room only to stop dead at the sight of the troll.

Professor McGonagall looked aghast at the sight. Professor Snape looked stunned, though he was still giving her that irritating searching look he always seemed to pin her with. The potions professor, who usually hated Gryffindors, had gone out of his way, while gruffy, to correct and make sure Helen/Sierra understood everything perfectly. It astounded everyone who knew him well.

Professor Quirrel, supposedly the DADA professor, crumpled in a heap and fainted.

"What...what did you do?" Professor McGonagall asked weakly.

"What did _I _do?" Sierra snarled. She let go of Hermione, allowing the girl to slump against the wall, before standing up straight and glaring at the three teachers. "What _I _did was save our fucking lives! How the _shit _did this thing get in here in the first place? Safest place in Britain, my fucking neck. How 'bout instead of standing there looking accusingly at me for having the guts to fight something trying to kill me, you take Hermione here up to the medical room? _Try _not to fuck that up, will you? Now, if you'll excuse me-"

She shoved her way right past McGonagall, who was sputtering something like 'my word-' and 'such language-', so shocked that she didn't even try to chase the redhead.

Sierra stormed down into the basement where the Slytherins were with a single-minded rage. Rage she hadn't felt in several years. She summoned a knife from nowhere and crept along in the darkness, searching for her victim.

There he was, laughing, with his two lackies on either side of him. "I bet the little mudblood was out where she wasn't supposed to," Draco was joking when the homocidal redhead stalked up behind him, "Would serve her right for-GAK!"

Sierra grabbed his head and slammed him against the wall. Goyle turned around, a look of stupid shock on his face, allowing Sierra to club him with the hilt of her knife. He dropped like a sack of bricks. Crabbe took a little more work, since he was prepared, but Sierra used her magic force to throw him against the wall, knocking him out to.

"You little fucking rat," She hissed, stomping on Draco's back as he tried to get away from her. "You nearly got her killed, you stupid sack of nazi shit."

She kicked him again before grabbing him by the collar and yanking him up to her face level. Draco was saying something like "my father" that died in a squeak when he saw her expression. Dropping him to the floor, Sierra pinned him down by a knee on the neck and raised her knife.

When Draco opened his mouth to scream, Sierra thrust a hand in and grabbed his tongue. Twisting the knife between her fingers, she said unnervingly calmly, "I'll be taking that. You obviously don't need it."

And with a slash, Draco Malfoy was muted.

**End Chapter**

**And so Sierra commits her first act of violence within the wizarding world. This is going to be a pattern with her. Needless to say, Volde/Quirrel is in for a big surprise when he goes for the stone this year...**

**Read and Review please!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: Ugh, that was harder then I imagined. Mostly because I wanted it to be bloodier, but this particular part of the story just doesn't lend itself to that...yet, anyway. I can't wait to get to Pettigrew's arrival. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 4: Dangerous Confrontations**

Helen wasn't sure how she'd gotten back to her dorm, but since Hermione was alright she decided it didn't matter.

The news of Draco's tongue being violently cut out had spread around the school like wildfire. The boy had been discovered by his friends, who had been knocked unconscious prior to the attack – Draco had been lying in a pool of blood, choking.

He had fallen unconscious by the time he was brought to the hospital wing. Poppy had managed to save him, but some strange magic was preventing her from reconstructing his tongue.

Both Crabbe and Goyle had been questioned, but they insisted that it had been too dark for them to recognize their attacker. They both insisted that it had been a girl with glowing red eyes, who radiated hatred and malice with her mere presence.

Their head of house dismissed this as nerves.

The teachers had cancelled morning classes for an enquiry; anyone who had seen Draco the previous day was interrogated. Aurors would be arriving at the school later that afternoon to follow up on the results. According to the papers, Lucius Malfoy – the boy's father and a school governor – would be arriving personally to see to the capture.

Helen's questioning, thankfully, was only a few minutes long. McGonagall was in charge, and she seemed convinced that someone as sweet and gentle as the last Potter couldn't possibly be capable of such depravity.

Helen swore she heard someone laughing bitterly when she left the room. It sounded a little like Sierra, though Helen could never be sure when she was awake.

More importantly, however (at least in Helen's opinion) was that Ron felt bad for giving Hermione trouble prior to the troll attack. After several apologies, the two had become friends, which Helen appreciated very much.

"Who do you reckon attacked Malfoy?" Ron asked over lunch. The three had taken to sitting together, seemingly untouched by the uncertainty and fear that had engulfed the school.

Helen shrugged. "It could be anyone, I guess." She said. "I mean, he wasn't very nice." Then she frowned. "Of course, cutting his tongue out wasn't very nice either..."

"You're right, Helen." Hermione frowned. "He hadn't been here for long, but Malfoy hadn't been making a lot of friends with his attitude. The only people I'm sure hadn't done it are all the people in Slytherin."

"Do you figure that Crabbe and Goyle were telling the truth? About the girl with red eyes?" Ron asked, a contemplative look on his face. "I mean, my big brother Bill is a cursebreaker, he's seen a lot of strange things. He says that people who use dark magic sometimes have strange things happen to their bodies and personality. That kind of magic changes people."

"I doubt it," Hermione said with a frown. "I mean, this is Hogwarts, with Albus Dumbledore as its headmaster. Who could get away with using dark magic under his nose? Especially students." She looked around. "A lot of Dark Magic takes years to master."

Ron shrugged. "It was just a thought, Hermione." He said. "I mean, why else would they say something like that."

"Well, they both got hit over the head pretty hard." Hermione rationalized. "It probably made them see things. It's not uncommon."

Helen nodded in agreement. She had been knocked unconscious before – Dudley once hit her hard enough to send her sprawling. She usually saw stars, but people did look a little funny and distorted once she could see again.

"Do either of you need help with your transfiguration homework?" Hermione asked, deliberately pulling the topic away from Malfoy.

Helen smiled shyly and said, "I can't get my feather to transform again. I managed it the first time but now I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong."

**Later that Night**

Sierra was bored and she couldn't sleep.

The Aurors were still tromping around the hospital wing as if they expected her to be stupid enough to try and finish Malfoy off. Sierra had only ever killed her aunt and uncle – while sometimes she had been tempted, ultimately she figured whoever had upset her didn't quite deserve that.

No one seemed to suspect her, which was good. It was always like this – Sierra just had to exclude her magic aura a bit to convince the nurses or whoever was watching her that she wasn't responsible for whatever befell the idiot of the week. It was simple trick she had perfected years ago, before she even knew she was a fully-fledged witch.

However, no amount of magic seemed to cure her insomnia. Sierra tried to dial back, allow the sleeping Helen to rest in the driver's seat, with no luck. Cursing, she got out of her bed and headed down to the common room.

Throwing herself down on the couch, Sierra resigned herself to listening to the snapping and crackling of the fire, lost in thought. She wasn't sure quite what to make of Hogwarts – it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get back into the world, but the troll attack had thrown a wrench into that little theory.

Someone had let the troll in, Sierra was sure of it. 'It was an accident', hah. With a school building like this, with security comparable to the mental asylum, nothing got in that wasn't invited. The question was, who let it in and why? Who was the target?

Part of her considered that it had been meant for Hermione – after all, she was a 'mudblood' as Malfoy had so delicately put it. (Sierra felt a surge of satisfaction knowing he would never say that again.) But what were the chances that someone could co-ordinate bringing the troll in with the possibility that Hermione would spent the day in the bathroom? No, an event like that would require time and secrecy to pull off, especially right under the collective noses of the staff. They would have to know just when the teachers would have a blind eye -

And who would know that better then one of the staff themselves?

Sierra sat up straight at that. Several thoughts occurred to her at once. Firstly, one of the staff members had let the troll in. Secondly, it was meant to kill someone – not a teacher, couldn't be, they'd be too well versed in magic to fall to something like that – so a student.

The questions were, who and why? Who was the real target, if not Hermione, and why would someone target a child who had barely begun their schooling? What threat, if any, could they possibly pose?

An answer came to her. A quick and unpleasant one.

She had -apparently- killed one of the greatest dark wizards who ever lived when she (or was it Helen?) was just a baby.

Maybe that troll had been meant for her.

Torn between fury over being assaulted over something that she couldn't even remember and anger that Hermione had nearly been killed in her stead, Sierra got to her feet and started pacing.

_Okay, so that's the _'why' _down. Now, _who _would be capable of that?_

_Malfoy? I did shove him in the compartment and tell him to go to hell. Was his father responsible? No, his father didn't make an appearance until I muted the brat. Besides, the boy was way to confident in his superiority to feel so threatened by just those two incidents._

_So that leaves the teachers. I'm pretty sure I can rule McGonagall out immediately, dense as she might be. Professor Snape...maybe, but he's too hit-and-miss around me for me to be sure. Flitwick has no reason to hate me that much, plus he has goblin blood so there's no way he was a follower of what's his face. Quirrel's a coward and an idiot, Pomona's too nice. _

Sierra pulled up short.

_Why would Quirrel have qualified to teach _Defence Against the Dark Arts _if he was as easily terrified and idiotic as he behaves? Out of all the teachers, he's the one who is the most likely to be hiding something. _

_Come to think of it, even Helen thinks there's something off about him, and she never suspects anyone of anything._

Sierra stood still for a moment before walking over to the dorm's exit.

_This calls for an investigation, especially since Hermione was nearly killed. And its not like I have anything better to be doing._

It was a little difficult to get around with the Aurors walking about – but Sierra had a knack for getting places unnoticed. Especially when it meant getting into the kitchen for extra food.

She went looking for Quirrel's office. _It has to be around here somewhere..._

"-you don't want me as your enemy, Quirrel. I know you let the troll in."

Sierra froze and threw herself against the wall. Snape's voice had come up quite suddenly from around the corner.

"I d-d-don't know w-w-what you're talking about!"

_I was right, _Sierra thought darkly. _It was him._

"Don't play innocent with me, Quirrel-"

Sierra's attention was suddenly grabbed by another unwelcome presence. Mrs Norris was heading in her direction, lamp-like eyes glowing. The redhead swore and unlocked the door she was leaning against with a quick charm, barring herself inside.

Leaning against the door, Sierra caught her breath. _Damn, that could have gone better...bloody cat. _She thought. Her eyes flicked around the room when she caught sight of a large ornate mirror.

Something – she wasn't sure what – compelled her to get closer to it until she appeared in the reflection. At first, she didn't see anything except herself. Then – moments later –

_Mother?_

Sierra blinked, trying to figure out if she was seeing things or not. But the mirage didn't fade away. Lily Evans-Potter stood beside her in the mirror, smiling tenderly and lovingly at her. Sierra had never seen images of her except for once, when the nurses had gotten her data. Now she felt frozen to the ground, unable to move and barely able to breathe.

Lily gently ran her fingers through her hair in the mirror. Sierra felt the ghost of a touch against her skin, and suddenly the room seemed blurry. Tears? She had never cried before. Never.

Her mother giggled a bit, before raising her hand. She was holding a red stone in her hand, holding it up at eye level before handing it to Sierra.

The redhead looked down. Suddenly she was holding a warm red stone. Sierra stared at it, turning it over in her hands. _What the hell_? She wondered. _Did this belong to my mother?_

"Well, well, well...Helen Potter..."

Sierra spun around, finding herself face to face with Quirrel.

Well...face to face wasn't the right word.

Quirrel's back was to her. But he had taken his turban off, revealing an ugly noseless face on the back of his head. If she hadn't been so surprised, Sierra would have been revolted.

"Fancy seeing you here...with the very thing I've been chasing after..." The second face said. Its voice was male and guttural, like he had swallowed gravel.

"You..." Sierra said warily, taking a step backwards and entering a fighting stance. "I knew it was you."

"Ah...so you're a smart child. Then...how about you give me the stone you just put in your pocket?"

"How about no?" Sierra snapped.

"Then you want your mother to have died in vain? Don't you know...she died begging me to show mercy, protecting you in her last moments...do you really want to throw that away?"

Sierra's vision blurred red and blood roared to her ears. She didn't care if she was heard, she didn't care who saw her -

All she wanted was to massacre the man in front of her.

A knife appeared in her hands; one of the same knives she had used to kill Vernon all those years ago. Then the whole room burst into flame. Sierra rushed directly at Quirrel-Voldemort.

Little recognized fact was that wizards relied heavily on their wands; even those who were very powerful. So taken aback by her boldness, Voldemort didn't react quite fast enough to put her in a bodybind.

So Sierra tackled him head on, knocking the body over. She raised her knife and drove it into the monster's left eye. Black blood sprayed everywhere, but Sierra wasn't undeterred. She thrust the knife into the other eye, and then began to blindly ram it into the skull over and over, ignoring the heat that was growing steadily under her hands.

Quirrel-Voldemort was screaming and screaming and it filled her ears, she wanted to hurt him, give him just a taste of the pain she had suffered as a child after he killed her mother. She wanted to pay him back every inch.

Gore and brains began to leak onto the floor as the skull was split open. Another horrific screech filled the air, as though something was being torn away from its last security. And still Sierra didn't stop; a single-minded maniac rage controlling her every action.

Until finally knife came down on the neck again with such force it was cloven straight through.

**End Chapter**

**Extreme Meele Revenge for the win! Expect a lot more where that comes from later.**

**Read and Review please!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Tyene: You have issues.**

**Wanda: What was your first hint? This is hardly my most morbid project. Or have you forgotten Barracuda?**

**Tyene: (shudders) I was hoping you would. seriously, that's incredibly fucked up!**

**Wanda: I know. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 5: Suspicion**

Helen woke up half submerged in a bathtub. The last thing she remembered was trying to go to sleep – how had she gotten down here...?

Lethargically, she sat up and grabbed hold of the sides of the bath to steady herself. Her fingers slipped and she noticed they were tinted red. Helen's heart skipped, she quickly dipped back into the water and started frantically rubbing her hands together.

Where had the blood come from?

The other thing that stuck out was the red stone. It was sitting precariously on her right, and it seemed to glow in the low light. Helen shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. Where had Sierra gotten that?

Maybe it was just a trinket or something. There were plenty of weird things just lying around, after all – she had seen Seamus Finnigan drop an Irish charm amulet just yesterday, hadn't she?

"What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

Helen let out a small shriek and spun around, plunging up to her neck in the water. One of the many Hogwarts ghosts was hovering a few feet away from her, grinning. Helen let out a small relieved sigh; it was another girl.

"I...fell asleep." Helen explained, rubbing her shoulders self-consciously.

"Asleep?" The ghost tilted her head to the right. "But you just came in here a little while ago. Your arms were all bloody." Her voice took on a mischievous note. "All the Aurors were called down by the Headmaster a few minutes ago."

"Called down? For what?" Helen asked. Anxiety flooded her stomach; what had happened? Had Sierra seen something?

The ghost girl let out a small giggle. "Don't worry. I won't tell." She promised. "It'll be our little secret...especially since it was Tom."

"Tom?" Helen echoed, raising her head to meet the ghost's eyes straight on as her inexplicable anxiety was replaced with curiosity. Then she realized she hadn't asked for the ghost girl's name. "I'm sorry, I don't know who you are."

"You don't!?" The girl demanded. "You haven't heard of miserable, moping, moaning Mrytle?"

"I'm sorry," Helen responded, frightened by the spectre's sudden anger. "I-I'm new here, and I haven't gotten to know everyone yet."

Mrytle seemed somewhat mollified at this. "Right. Well, Tom was the one who's blood was all over your hands. But he killed me, so I won't tell." The ghost giggled at this.

Helen wasn't sure how to respond. "Oh...I'm sorry you died," She said. _Someone had killed Mrytle just inside this school. _"That must have been very scary."

"It was!" Mrytle shrieked, bolting towards the ceiling. "And the _worst _part is that I can't _leave! _I'm _stuck _in this horrible little school where people _tormented _me because I had glasses and my daddy couldn't use magic!"

"Why can't you leave?"

"This place is cursed," Mrytle answered bitterly. "None of us ghosts can pass on because of it."

"Can't the teachers break the curse?"

"No," Mrytle said. "They've been trying for over fifty years. Nothing's worked." She floated down to eye level with Helen.

"I'm sorry," Helen said sadly. She tried to imagine what it would be like to be stuck on earth instead of going to heaven with her parents and reached out to comfort Mrytle. Of course, her hand slid right through, causing an unpleasant pins and needles sensation to run down her spine.

Mrytle tilted her head and stared at Helen for a minute. "You're weird," She said. Then, she brightened and said, "I like you! Come on, the Aurors will be searching the castle again. I'll cover for you."

Helen was confused as to what she was being covered for, but she obligingly got out of the bathtub and left the bathroom. On instinct, she took the red stone and hid it away in her pocket.

"Miss Potter!" McGonagall was aghast to see the small, fragile-looking girl wandering around, soaked to the bone. "For heaven's sake what are you doing out here!?"

"You should send people to the bathroom in pairs, Professor!" Mrytle said in a sing-song voice. "This silly little thing fell asleep in the bath. She was so very tired she didn't even notice she was nodding off!"

McGonagall went slightly white. "Fifteen points from Gryffindor, miss Potter! You could have drowned!" She waved her wand around, and Helen squeaked in surprise when she suddenly became warm and dry. McGonagall then took her hand and marched her back to the Gryffindor tower as Aurors swept past them, disappearing towards the unused classrooms in groups.

Helen gratefully crawled into her bed and fell asleep. All she was worried about was that Ron might get mad that they had lost fifteen points.

**-Jekyll and Hyde-**

Aurors would surround the school for the rest of the year. Despite their vigilance, Draco's attacker and the one who had killed Professor Quirrel was never found. No further attacks occurred. Lucius Malfoy was furious.

Helen didn't really notice. She was too busy cheering Gryffindor on during Quidditch and burying herself in magic to pay them much mind. She studied with Hermione and played exploding snap with Ron, all while her magic grew stronger and more complex.

Her best friend even invited her to spend the summer with his extensive family. Hermione couldn't come, since she was going on a trip with her parents, but Helen was incredibly excited none the less. She had already met the Weasley Twins Fred and George, and they were very funny! They seemed to go out of their way to make Helen laugh whenever she and Ron were hanging out together. Fred had taken to calling her 'cute little kitten' and teasingly suggested that such cuteness should be banned by law.

Sierra was more interested in meeting Bill, though she tolerated the twin's antics with the closest she ever came to smiling. Ron spent the entire train ride back regaling her with tales of his curse-breaking adventures. Sierra was fascinated by some of the curses described – intruders growing extra heads, exploding stomachs and other unpleasant events seemed to make up the bulk of his work.

Sierra hoped to grill the oldest Weasley on it when they met.

Something that the older personality had noticed, however, was that the Headmaster seemed to be watching her very closely. She could sense him watching her during meals and whenever she walked by him in the halls.

_Should I invest in a rape whistle? _Sierra wondered caustically before brushing the thought aside. The attention didn't seem to fit that mould, though she certainly would bring that accusation out if the 'Santa grandpa' kept staring at her next year.

**-Jekyll and Hyde-**

Molly and Arthur Weasley don't meet Sierra during the two months Lily Potter's daughter stays with them.

Helen felt like the Burrow was in a different dimension – one where there was no frowning, everyone loved each other and played games without a care in the world.. Just being there made her feel stronger and happier then she had ever been before.

Upon getting there, she met Ron's younger sister Ginny. Since Helen was staying in her room, the two of them became fast friends. At first Ginny had been quite shy around Helen, since she had this image in her head of the other girl being some sort of mighty heroine.

However, Helen slowly broke that imagine down, and not even in a bad way! She proved to be equally self-conscious and self-deprecating, and proved to have a shared love of literature with the youngest Weasley. Whenever they weren't playing with Ron, they would sit together on the couch pouring over a copy of the Beetle and the Bard or the Brother's Grimm book that Helen took everywhere.

Ron loved Quidditch, but Helen was much more comfortable watching it then actually playing it. She had a crippling fear of heights and the brooms moved too fast for her comfort. Ron was disappointed, but Fred and George and Ginny were more then willing to play the game while Helen settled for cheering from the sidelines.

Molly quickly began to dote on Helen. The shy and unassuming girl quickly found herself being given second and third helpings at dinner, extra sweets and offers to be shown around the kitchen. The lavish affection scared Helen a bit; though she tried to hide it she was more and more nervous about doing something wrong not realizing that there wasn't much wrong she _could _do wrong in the Weasley mother's eyes.

Arthur liked to ask Helen about mundane objects and how they worked. Helen ended up explaining the functions of a rubber duck, light switches, television and other objects that she took for granted that none of her friends (sans Hermione of course) had even heard of.

Teaching Ron how to operate a phone had definitely been a highlight – Ron had misunderstood the explanation and shouted into the receiver as if he was trying to speak to someone at the other end of a football field. A very frazzled Hermione had to tell him three times to speak normally.

Something Helen hadn't even noticed until the fall started to roll around again was that the Weasleys didn't have much money. Upon receiving their book lists for the next year, Fred had noted, "This won't come cheap mum."

This bothered Helen greatly. She offered to pay for some of the books – for some reason, there was a lot of gold in her vault – but Molly had gently refused, saying that she couldn't bring herself to dip into an orphan's vault.

Secretly Helen slipped her a little money anyway; she didn't like seeing her best friends struggling. So, both Ron and Ginny went to school with new wands.

Helen celebrated going through two months without a Blank Space, but the trip to Diagon Alley soundly broke her streak.

**-Jekyll and Hyde-**

Sierra was plotting a murder. A murder so gruesome, Wes Craven would shy away from putting it in his horror movies. A murder that involved battery acid, toothpicks, rusted nails, and a railway pike. It would be such a horror to behold that people would shudder at the very mention of her name, that conversations would die if she was mentioned. The only comparison to the rage she currently felt was when 'Aunt' Marge had come to 'visit' her back at the hospital, and left in a body bag after having an 'accident' with a fire axe.

She 'accidentally' knocked it loose and caused it to fall on her skull. She fell on it ten times, to be exact.

Even now Sierra was contemplating doing much worse. She plotted a murder so foul, the Death Eaters and their master would quake in their boots.

"...and her new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart! Order of Merlin, Third Class, Thrice Winner of the Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award." The tall blonde man who's most unwelcome had was on her shoulder proclaimed with a sickening smile, while some of the women in the audience laughed.

Sierra forced herself to maintain her patented Queen Victoria I Am Not Amused Face. If the pure hatred in her face was caught on camera, there could be evidence when this _person _turned up in a ditch in the not-so-distant future. No, _when _she killed him, it was going to be without evidence.

And speaking of no evidence, she was also considering taking up underage drinking. She couldn't see any way of getting through this _person_'s classes without being completely wasted.

This _person _was as if self-indulgence, single-minded arrogance, slime and sugar ran off to Camp Crystal Lake and had an unholy love child. The sheer unpleasantness of being within simple proximity to him made her want to barf continuously. His touch made her skin crawl as if inhabited by an entire colony of spiders. His voice made her want to gouge her own ears out. And he was just _obnoxious_.

"I spotted her instantly, of course, a like mind in fame and heroism."

He was going to die. Slowly. Painfully. Screaming. She would kill him and use his brains and blood for finger paint.

Lockhart plainly didn't sense the sheer amount of killer intent rolling off his captive, because he prattled on for another ten agonizing minutes before Sierra finally had an excuse to escape. Her footsteps through the store were almost robotic as she tried to contain her seething rage.

_Not out here. Too many witnesses. Kill him later. Yes, _definitely _kill him later._

"A...Are you okay, Helen?" Hermione asked in alarm after Sierra pushed her way through the crowd to rejoin her.

"Fine!" Sierra snapped, before taking a deep breath. "Just. Fine." When Hermione looked at her in disbelief, she added flatly, "I don't like cameras. Or crowds."

Hermione nodded sympathetically. "I don't either. Let's get out of here, Ginny and Ron are getting the last of their books."

Sierra followed her bookworm friend sedately, still struggling to meditate and banish the blonde haired _person _from her immediate memory.

When the Weasleys came into view, Sierra noticed they had an audience.

Lucius Malfoy managed to look even more confidently pompous then his son, to Sierra's amazement. He was staring contemptuously down at Ginny and Hermione's parents, who looked nervous and out of their element.

"...the company you keep, Weasley." Lucius said, staring clearly at Hermione's parents. "Just when I thought you could sink no lower..."

_Oh, good_. _Another target. _

"Yes, of course. Why hang out with non wizarding people when you can be fucking your sister to keep your bloodline pure?" Sierra sniped, striding up to Ginny's side. "Siblings! What a lovely relation. Imagine that, Ginny! You have ample choice to maintain your pure blood."

Ginny stared at her as if she was insane. Sierra gave her a quick dry smile in response, which was as close as she got to miming gagging.

Lucius's eyes narrowed into slits. "Well, well...if it isn't Helen Potter. Returned to the wizarding world." He sized her up for a minute. "So you're the one who brought down the Dark Lord."

"And you a sister-fucking, inbred imbecile." Sierra pronounced with distaste. "That would certainly explain why you sing the praises of an incompetent fuckwit who got himself killed by a baby."

Lucius went red at the face. "What a mongrel tongue...though I suppose I should expect no less, raised by muggles."

Hermione's mother bristled, but Sierra was faster. "What a pompous twit you are." She mimed his tone. "Why shouldn't they envy you, when you're only claim to fame is a long line of dead bodies and missing braincells from all those brother-sister marriages. I mean, if you were a muggle you'd have to _work _to be respected instead of sitting on your ass mooching off of said dead people."

She crossed her arms. "It's funny, I'm fairy certain that if I took away your wand and put you on a deserted island with a muggle, you would be the first to die. Tell me, oh superior wizard, when was the last time you achieved something that you couldn't buy? When did you have to struggle to overcome something instead of being handed everything outright because you have a fancy last name? Have you ever had to fight against seemingly impossible odds for anything? Have you ever watched everything you ever built destroyed by disaster, where there was no easy money solution to pull yourself up?"

She smiled coldly. "The moment you stand on solid ground instead of hiding behind legislation, you lose. You're obsolete. You're parasites who can't function on your own, and you don't have the right to judge _anything!_"

Lucius turned several fascinating colors before snarling, "I won't forget this insult, mudblood." With the flick of his cape, he stormed out of the room.

"And you pout like Dudley," Sierra tossed a parting shot his way before turning her attention to Ginny. "Looks like you can't do things the easy way, Ginny. You might actually have to go out into the world and find someone you love and are compatible with to marry."

Ginny giggled and beamed at the older girl. "Thank you, Helen."

**End Chapter**

**Yeah, Lockhart won't be lasting too long. Neither will Lucius, for that matter, because he gave Ginny a cursed book. And no one hurts Sierra's 'precious things'.**

**Read and Review please!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Sierra: I hate you.**

**Wanda: Is there anyone you like outside of Hermione or the Weasleys? And what did I do?**

**Sierra: You let Malfoy leave? I was going to force feed him acid!**

**Wanda: (checks script) ...I'm pretty sure that's Clara's fatality for him. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 6: Violence**

Sierra wanted to either bludgeon herself to death, or straight up murder Lockart with a knife, damn the fact there were dozens of witnesses in the room.

The man's self interested prattling didn't even remotely constitute teaching, and the fact that he was honestly expecting her to answer a quiz that started with the question "what is Gildeory Lockart's favorite color?" was grounds enough for murder, as far as she was concerned. The utterly insufferable _prick_!

The redhead felt as though there weren't quite _words _enough for how loathsome this man was. As such, her answers were curt and vitriolic.

_Nobody gives a damn._

_How is this related to defence?_

_I imagine the sheer whiteness of your teeth burned her eyes out of her skull. I think I might go the same way if you don't stop that._

_I'd rather gouge my eardrums out with my fingers._

_I would sooner drink a bucket of acid then ask._

_You give a bad name to idiotic fops everywhere._

_Your voice is so painful to listen to, I imagine the monster committed suicide instead of remain in your presence for a moment longer._

_There are rocks more intelligent then you._

_Do you have any idea how annoying you are!?_

Sierra couldn't fathom why Hermione Granger – Hermione!, with her book smarts and clever thinking – had a crush on _this_ waste of oxygen. She'd be better off crushing on Ron or Neville. At least Ginny seemed to be avoiding that pitfall.

Helen had been hanging around Ginny, wanting to make sure the other girl started off her school year on a good note. She had quickly been introduced to Ginny's other good friend, Luna Lovegood.

Sierra met Luna after that class in an abandoned hallway, where she was taking in the pretty scenery and trying to regain control over her ever frayed temper. "Hello, Luna," She said absently, having heard her name from Ginny.

"Hello, not-Helen." Luna said dreamily.

Sierra's head jerked up. "What?"

"Well, you are, aren't you? You're not Helen." Luna said, as though it was obvious.

Sierra was totally flabbergasted. "But – what – how could you tell!? No one – I mean – what!? WHAT!?"

Luna didn't seem at all perturbed by the other girl's over the top reaction. "I've always seen a lot of things no one else does." She explained. "You don't really _look _like Helen. I mean, you do look like her, except...you move and speak and hold yourself differently. It's like seeing two paintings overlapping. One's on top, but the other one is peaking out from under."

Sierra turned around to face the girl fully. "You..." She placed her face in her hand for a moment before saying, "I don't even know what to say to that."

"What's your name?" Luna asked.

"...I'm Sierra," Sierra responded after a few moments before asking, "But please don't call me that unless we're alone – I'll be committed faster then you can say 'Quidditch', and I like my freedom."

"Okay." Luna said with a smile. "You look annoyed. Are the nargles bothering you?"

"The..._what_?"

"They like to infest your hair and make you cranky and irritable." Luna explained.

Sierra wondered if Luna was playing with a full deck herself. "Nah, none of those...as far as I know, anyway. It's just...our defence _teacher_." She really had to strain to say the word teacher.

"He's not very smart, is he?"

"That's a polite way of saying he's a fucking hack! There's no way he preformed half of the stunts he claims to if he couldn't handle a bunch of frickin pixies!"

"Perhaps he has nargles." Luna suggested.

"Oh, he definitely has -something-," Sierra said darkly. "Hopefully he'll be a few chips short by the end of this year, if only to prevent him from coming back."

She planned to make sure of that.

"Have you seen Ginny's shadow?" Luna asked conversationally after a moment of surprisingly comfortable silence.

"I'm sorry?" Sierra responded, hoping for a translation.

"It's been following her ever since she got into school." Luna said. "I think it's making her tired. She's been writing in her diary a lot lately; says she's really nervous about being in school for the first time."

Sierra frowned. _A shadow, that's somehow making Ginny tired?_ Something about that was fishy; she'd dismiss it as her imagination if she wasn't in a school where magic was possible. "I'll ask her about that later, Luna. Thanks for telling me."

"You're welcome." Luna said, blinking in surprise.

Sierra cracked something resembling a smile. Luna was okay, even though she was thoroughly weird.

**Later, in the Dorm**

"hey Ginny, how are you feeling?"

The redhead blinked sleepily. "mmm? Helen? What is it?"

"Luna told me you seemed run down." Sierra responded easily, sliding onto the chair next to her red haired friend. "I wanted to check on you."

"Oh...that's nice of her." Ginny said. Her voice sounded distinctly more run down then the energetic girl who could run all day if she wanted to, the girl Helen had become friends with. Sierra knew that something was definitely wrong.

"Is there a problem?"

"I...don't know." Ginny waved vaguely towards her bed. "I felt okay earlier today, but after dinner I came up here, wrote in my new diary, did some homework...and I just feel _awful _all of a sudden."

Sierra clicked her tongue. _I don't like the sound of that. _"Get some early sleep, Ginny. If you still feel bad tomorrow, go see Poppy." Did that sound like something Helen would say? Well, Ginny gave a sleepy affirmative and Sierra half carried, half dragged her over to her bed and let her lie down.

Pulling the cover over her, Sierra threw a look around to make sure Hermione or another nosy girl wasn't looking and began digging through Ginny's bookbag. A pristine but old looking diary was buried under several glossy Lockhart textbooks. Pulling it out, Sierra started flipping through the pages.

It was completely blank. There was no sign that Ginny had written in it at any point. Her suspicions rising, Sierra carried it downstairs and grabbed a quill and ink.

_I am Sierra. This is my second year at Hogwarts. This is a diary – or is it?_

She had hardly finished writing the sentence when suddenly the ink faded away. Sierra swore and slammed the book shut. She waited a moment, but when the book neither screamed or started spitting blood, she warily opened it to the page again.

_Hello Sierra. My name is Tom Riddle._

"...What the actual _fuck_."

Somehow, Sierra doubted this was a gift from Molly or Arthur. Slamming it shut, she stuffed it into her bag and left the common room, heading for the library. Hopefully she would figure out exactly what the hell this thing was supposed to be.

She was walking down the hall when something hard struck her in the back of the head. "Ow! Son of a bi-!"

Turning around, Sierra found herself face to face with Lockhart. The man looked started, and he quickly moved his right hand behind his back.

"Ah! Helen," The fop said with an overly cheerful. "I was looking for you."

"...Why?" _...That fucker just tried to curse me!? _

"I was hoping to discuss a time when you could rewrite your essay. It wasn't quite...up to snuff."

_Over my dead body._

"I'm not sure I understand," Sierra said through her teeth.

She was saved from arguing with him when a scream echoed through the hall. Sierra recognized Hermione's voice and immediately ran down the hall.

She skidded to a halt just behind the bookworm and Ron, who were both standing and staring up at the ceiling. Sierra followed their gaze to see a stone-like cat hanging from the ceiling. Near the disturbing ornament was a message written in blood.

_The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware._

"..." Sierra turned her head towards Ron. "...What's this? Ron, who's threatening us?"

"It's...it's the heir of Slytherin." Ron whispered. "My mum told me stories of the first time the chamber was opened...a student died!"

"Heir of Slytherin?" It didn't take Sierra long to connect the dots. Slytherin had a habit of drawing in pure blood bigots due to ambition being one of their prized traits. Draco's attitude made it clear that the 'enemies' the pure bloods perceived were those without two wizard parents. Now one of them wanted to step up their game and eliminate anyone who they thought was unworthy of magic.

"Helen?" Sierra heard Luna's voice behind her. It was the first time the younger blonde sounded anything other then tranquil – there was a note of fear in her voice.

"Ron...Hermione...go back and get Ginny. Then I want you to go outside and get into Hagrid's hut. Hide there overnight. Luna, grab some of the first years in your class and do the same." Sierra ordered, her tone dead quiet.

"But Helen, the teachers will want to-"

"Hermione, where were the teachers when you were almost killed by the troll, or when Malfoy was attacked?" Sierra barked. "Get outside! We don't know where this bastard might be."

Ron put a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "But what about you?"

"I'll join you later. I have a hunch and I want to follow through on it."

"But it's dangerous!"

Sierra gave Hermione a humourless look. "Hermione, I skewered a fully grown mountain troll when I was learning first year spells. I'll be fine. Now go!"

Ron, thankfully, was sufficiently motivated at the thought of his little sister being in mortal danger to agree. Once he and Hermione were out of view, Sierra decided to go looking for ghosts to interrogate. Given how long some of them were around, they were bound to know something.

/

"Oh, hello! My favourite student."

Sierra's search had proven to be largely frustrating until she stopped in the girl's bathroom and was greeted by Moaning Myrtle.

"What do you want?" Sierra asked testily; the frustration was beginning to get to her.

"I heard you were looking for the chamber." Myrtle responded, floating down in front of the girl. "Didn't you know, I was the person who died when the chamber first opened?"

"What? Seriously? What do you remember?"

"A pair of big yellow eyes, over by that sink." Myrtle pointed a finger over at the decorated sink. "And then I was dead."

Sierra crossed her arms and thought for a moment. "Huh, sounds like some sort of beast. Now, what could kill you just by..." She let out a wordless snarl. "Are you seriously telling me Pedo Santa hasn't evacuated the school when he knows there's a goddamn basilisk in it!?"

Myrtle burst into giggles at the description of Dumbledore. "It's been quiet ever since I died," She explained. "Tom never had a chance to open it again. Until now."

"Tom? Do you possibly mean Tom Riddle?" Sierra demanded.

Myrtle looked distressed and angry all at once. "I thought he loved me." She muttered. "He said I was different. Then he killed me."

Sierra's fingers sank into her palm. _So Ginny's diary is connected to this attack! Where the hell did she get...that...from...?_

Abruptly Sierra remembered Lucius Malfoy. She remembered him talking down at Arthur and Hermione's parents while standing right next to Ginny's cauldron. Lucius Malfoy, who was a former death eater...who was quite likely to have something like this.

_Oh, Lucy. You just screwed the pooch. _Sierra thought darkly. _I wonder if you'll still look so pretty after I drown you in battery acid. But first...I'm going to deal with Lockhart._

**Later that Evening**

Sierra discovered Lockhart's fondness for memory charms by chance. When she slipped into his office, she heard him muttering about it. He thought she had figured him out somehow, thanks to the answers she had put on his 'quiz'.

Lockhart had intended to knock her out and erase her memory back to the beginning of the school year in order to prevent being exposed.

Sierra showed him how little she appreciated that when she knocked him out.

Dragging the body back to the Floo, Sierra transported herself to Muggle London. In about an hour, she came across one of the train lines that was still in use, mostly in transporting large amounts of goods that couldn't go by plain.

She dropped Lockhart onto the tracks and transfigured herself a railway pike. With a fierce blow, she drove it through his left shoulder, then another through his right. Then she cauterized the wound around them and waited.

Lockhart woke up just before the train ran him over, spraying blood and gore across Sierra's face. The girl disinterestedly brushed her hand across her eyes, removing some of the blood, before muttering, "That should get you some attention." before heading back to the floo entrance.

**End Chapter**

**Next time, Lucius is accused of planting the diary on Ginny and his silence speaks volumes. Sierra collaberates with a certain house elf in order to give the man his dues. his bloody gory dues.**

**Read and Review please!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Tyene: And I thought _you _were messed up.**

**Wanda: (shrugs) There's nothing more comforting then knowing that there's someone out there crazier then you are. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 7: Cold Blooded**

Helen woke to pandemonium the next morning. Some of the girls in her dorm were crying, while Hermione was rushing about looking for her and gasped in relief when finding her in bed.

"Mia? What's wrong?" Helen asked in confusion.

"It's professor Lockhart! He's been murdered!" Hermione gasped.

Helen's eyes widened and she scrambled out of bed. Hermione lead her downstairs to the common room where Ron was staring blankly at the Daily Prophet George had smuggled into the dorm. When he realized Helen was coming, he quickly closed it and folded it so she couldn't see any of the pictures?

"How?" Helen asked meekly, sliding into the chair next to him. "I thought...I thought they said this was the safest place in Britain..."

"No one knows." Ron said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders. Helen flinched slightly before leaning against his side, seeking comfort. "Professor Dumbledore seems to think he left on his own free will, and someone attacked him outside the school. His room is totally in tact, no signs of struggle. If I had to guess, I'd say the heir of Slytherin did it."

"Heir...?"

Ron looked at her in concern. "Don't you remember? We saw his first message last night, you told us to go and hide."

"Oh...right..." She _had _experienced a Blank Space. Maybe Sierra knew something about it...if only there was some way for Helen to talk to her. "I'm sorry, I'm still waking up..."

Ron gave her a sympathetic look and brushed her hair aside with one hand. "Don't worry. I'm sure that the Professors will take care of it."

Helen managed to smile at him before asking, "Where's Ginny?" She looked around, but she couldn't see the redhaired girl anywhere.

"She went out earlier, said she lost something and wanted to ask Professor McGonagall for help finding it." Hermione said. She looked a bit worried. "I would have thought she'd be back by now."

"Let's go looking for her," Helen said anxiously, getting to her feet. "I mean, if Lockhart was murdered...! It's not safe to be out there by herself!"

"She should be with Professor McGonagall," Hermione said soothingly. "It's alright, Helen – they wouldn't let anything happen to her."

Helen bit her lip. "Okay...but if I don't see her by lunch, I'm going to go looking." She said determinedly.

**Several Hours Later**

When lunch rolled around and Ginny was still nowhere to be seen, Helen darted out of the great hall despite Hermione's protests that they should talk to Professor McGonagal first. She looked in the library and outside in the yard, two places that she had Ginny had hung out before, but she wasn't there.

Ron joined her and was beginning to share her concern. "Where could she have gotten off too?" He wondered as they sprinted through the halls, trying to guess where she might be.

Helen didn't answer; the scar on her forehead was prickling as though stabbed with tiny needles. There was no sense to it, but she was absolutely positive that something was very wrong.

They were just passing by the girl's bathroom when a scream split the air. Helen's heart jumped.

"No! No, no no...! go away! Why...go away, please!"

"Ginny!" Ron shouted, barreling towards the door.

The two Gryffindors burst onto the scene.

/

Sierra was swamped with a familiar haze of rage at the sight.

Ginny was surrounded by a sickly green aura, thrashing and clinging to the door of a stall for dear life as though fighting against her own body. A familiar diary lay on the ground, its pages flipping as though in a windstorm as green light left Ginny and entered it.

Sierra ran forward and snatched it off the floor, throwing it in the air. _Burn! _She thought furiously.

The wave of power swamped her. An animalistic screech filled the air as a bird of flame burst from her hands and consumed the book. When the flames burnt out, only the toasted cover remained behind. The aura surrounding Ginny dissipated.

Sierra darted forward just in time to catch and prevent Ginny from falling back on the floor. The younger girl was pale as a corpse, her chest heaving as though every breath was painful.

"Ginny? Ginny!? What's wrong? What happened?" Ron asked in a panic, grabbing Ginny's shoulders.

"That's not helpful, Ron!" Sierra said harshly, grabbing his attention. "Help me pick her up, we need to get her to Poppy."

Ron nodded, his face twisted in a way that made him seem nauseous before grabbing Ginny's legs. Sierra stuffed the burnt cover under her arms to present to the teachers. Together, the two of them brought her up the stairs into the hospital wing.

Poppy took Ginny from them, clear distress on her face. Sierra stood there in silence as Professor McGonagall and the other teachers were called down to investigate and ask questions.

Ginny whimpered.

"You're going to be okay, Gin," Ron said shakily, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You're gonna be just fine."

"Is...is he gone...?"

"Is who gone? Ginny, what happened...did someone try to put you under the Imperious Curse!?"

"The _what_?" Sierra demanded.

Ron looked up at her for a moment, his freckles standing out starkly against his now very pale face. "It's one of the three unforgivable curses, it forces people to do your bidding."

"He...he tried to make me kill Hagrid's chickens..." Ginny whispered, shuddering. "I said no...but then...but then...! It-it was like he was _inside _me...!"

Sierra's fingernails dug so deeply into her palms she drew blood. "You're safe now, Ginny." She said in a deathly quiet voice. "That diary you found was cursed. I managed to destroy it. Now Poppy's going to take care of you, alright?"

Ginny looked at her, her face streaked with tears. Sierra remembered her smiling and laughing while she played Quidditch, and the dark pool in her stomach deepened...

She reached out and placed her hand on Ginny's forehead. "You'll be just fine." She said. "I'll protect you. Just rest now."

Ginny gave her a tiny nod, relief flooding her face. Ron stayed next to her, asking her questions and giving comforting hugs, while Sierra pivoted on one heel and stormed towards the Headmaster's Office. She stopped at the Gargoyle outside and barked out the name of every magic sweet she knew until it opened – the Headmaster was known for his sweet tooth.

She stepped into the hall when she realized that the Headmaster was already in talks with someone. Pressing herself against the wall in order to remain unseen, Sierra listened.

"...I'm simply wondering how poor Ginerva came across the diary." It was Dumbledore. _Wait. He knew about the diary? _Sierra thought. _How, and why didn't he say anything when he saw Ginny writing in it? _

_I'm beginning to think Pedo Santa isn't as saintly as people say he is..._

"How dare you suggest that?" Lucius demanded. "My first concern for the students of this school."

"And yet...some of the board of governors were under the impression you were threatening their families in order to ensure that I would loose my post this year. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that this conversation would occur at the same time a threat to reopen the Chamber was found..."

_I knew it,_ Sierra thought darkly. She reached into the her bag, which she had placed an internal expansion charm upon some time ago, and pulled out the invisibility cloak she had been given for Christmas last year and threw it over her head.

She had sent off a message thanks to Colin Creevy, who had a mildly disturbing crush on her, to her friends that she wasn't feeling well and was going to be hiding out for a while, away from the crowds. She said the stress of seeing Ginny attacked was making her feel sick.

Hopefully that would give her the time to do what she had been planning.

Eventually Lucius stormed out of the office, and Sierra discreetly gave chase.

At first she was concerned that he might go to the Ministry – too many people, too easily exposed. However, he instead took the floo to his home allowing her to follow suit without much trouble.

/

The home of the Malfoy's was garishly grandeur. Sierra was reminded of Vernon and Petunia, which didn't do her temper any favours.

Narcissa, the wife, wasn't home. She was out with a social meeting, _how many of these pureblood bastards are there?, _Sierra wondered darkly.

She had studied up on Transfiguration. It was by far her favourite subject at Hogwarts, since it had so many practical applications and it was the class she excelled at – Helen, as far as she could tell, was more comfortable with Herbology and Charms.

Sierra was a prodigy in transfiguration, something that delighted Professor McGonagall to no end. According to her, her father had also been extremely talented in this field of magic. Though Sierra had different uses for it then the old professor probably had in mind.

Stunning the strange small creature that had filled up the bathtub, Sierra waited until Lucius came into the room. Then she struck.

She disarmed him and blasted him into the tub with a stunner. Lucius sputtered and coughed, flailing around to see who had attacked him. With a flick of her wand, Sierra transfigured the water into a familiar substance – battery acid. It was thick, dark and most importantly very poisonous.

Then she dropped the anvil to pin him.

Sierra watched dispassionately as Lucius vainly struggled to free himself – were all 'superior' wizards helpless without their wands? For pete sake, Vernon put up a better fight...not for long, but it was more then this guy was managing...

Eventually Lucius could no longer keep his head above the acid, and he disappeared. A few bubbles floated up, but then there was nothing.

Sierra let out a snort. "No one touches my things," She muttered darkly. "Ron...Hermione...Ginny... Luna...they're mine...and no one else can take them, harm them...and anyone who does will die screaming."

Noise at the floo. Sierra smiled coldly. The wife was home.

**End Chapter**

**The first mention of the scar prickling. Just as a note...Sierra, Helen's illness and the scar are connected...how, I'll leave you to speculate...but I hope you'll be surprised.**

**Read and Review please!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Sierra: What do you mean, I'm not in this chapter!?**

**Wanda: Hey, you killed two people last time. Give Helen a little time in the sun, won't you? I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 8: Dementors**

The murder of the Malfoys was the talk of the country for months after the fact. The fact that the Malfoys had many enemies didn't do the investigation any favours, especially since there wasn't any magical evidence left behind at the scene aside from the transfigured bath water. The house elf wasn't any use either; he had been stunned just prior to the murders.

The Ministry was still rattling on about the case months later, until the summer – when another important case pushed it out of the news.

Ginny and Helen, who were up late talking at the Burrow, were distracted from their discussion of Cinderella when they heard Arthur and Molly's raised voices down in the kitchen.

"...would be irresponsible not to tell her!"

"Tell what?" Helen asked in confusion – it took her a second to realize it hadn't been Ginny who spoke.

The redhead frowned and crawled towards the door to avoid setting off the creaky floorboards. Helen carefully followed along behind her until they were pressed against the top of the stairs, listening intently.

"Heavens sake, Arthur, the truth would terrify her!" Molly was saying, aghast. "You know how gentle and timid Helen is – this knowledge would give her a panic attack! She'd be jumping at every shadow, living in fear!"

"I'm not trying to scare her, I want to put her on her guard!" Arthur said. Helen had never heard him sound so aggravated. "She can't protect herself from someone she doesn't know is after her! Black's escaped from Azkaban – it's supposed to be inescapable – so it stands to reason he might find a way into Hogwarts or at least to Honeydukes! If, Merlin forbid, Black is able to approach her, she needs to know what he'd do to her."

"But we aren't sure Black is after Helen, Arthur..."

"Then who is he after, Molly? Black lost everything when the Dark Lord fell, and he's had twelve years to brood on that. Helen is the reason he fell, and I sincerely doubt a man who would blow up a street full of innocent people wouldn't seek revenge on the one responsible for that!"

"Arthur, you're forgetting Albus Dumbledore. I'm sure that as long as he's there, Black can't get anywhere near Helen..."

"Last year, our daughter was possessed and could have been killed under Dumbledore's watch." Arthur said heatedly. "He's a good man, but he isn't omnipotent, and Black would only need to get in once..."

"Boys can't enter the girl's dormitories, she should be safe in there..."

"Azkaban was supposed to be safe, and she won't spend the entire year in the dorms...we need to tell her..."

"Black?" Ginny whispered, stunned.

"Black? Who's Black?" Helen asked, her heart thumping. "Why would he want to...k-kill me?"

"Sirius Black was You Know Who's number two back in the first war," Ginny explained in a hushed voice. "When the war was over, he wouldn't accept it...he cast a curse that blew up the whole street just to kill one person – Peter Pettigrew."

Helen was aghast. "How could someone do that?"

"I don't know." Ginny said seriously. "Maybe it's the magic. Dark magic does things to you. It messes with your soul, dad says...even good people, very good people have fallen to its corrupting influence." She looked down, clearly thinking about the diary she had very innocently picked up.

"So...you think Black was turned bad by dark magic, and that's why he did that?" Helen asked.

Ginny shrugged. "I've only heard rumours. Mum wouldn't tell me the whole story, and the stuff I tried to read about it was kind of conflicting. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that he did it."

Helen shivered. "Let's go to sleep, Ginny." She said quietly. She had a lot to think about.

**The Next Morning**

"I don't want to scare you unnecessarily Helen...but there's been an escape from Azkaban, and I need you to be careful going out and about."

"Of course Mr Weasley," Helen said earnestly.

Arthur smiled, though he did turn his attention to Ron and his older brother Percy and said, "Ron, Percy you're in charge of making sure Helen and your sister stay out of trouble – no falling asleep in the bathtub late at night by yourself, understand?"

"Yes Mr Weasley," Helen and Ginny echoed. Ginny wasn't thrilled at having her older brother be her designated guard dog, but after last year she wasn't going to object to feeling safe.

Fred and George were the only ones who seemed upbeat as the Weasley family took cars down to Platform Nine and Three Quarters where they met up with Hermione. Once they were on the train, Helen and Ron poured the story out to her. Their bushy haired friend was equally alarmed.

At least they had a teacher in their compartment. The new Defence Teacher, Ron said – Professor RJ Lupin, his case said.

"So Sirius Black broke out of Azkaban to come after you?" Hermione asked, upset. When Helen nodded, Hermione moaned and leaned back against her seat.

"Can't we have a, non-life threatening year at school this time?" The bushy haired girl lamented. Ginny let out a grumble of agreement while Ron looked sheepish and Helen shrugged helplessly.

"I guess I'm just a trouble magnet." Helen said sadly.

"It's not your fault, Helen." Ron rushed to reassure her. "You just have some bad luck, and people who don't let go of grudges."

Suddenly, the train screeched to a halt. Helen was nearly thrown into Ginny while Ron hit his head against the window.

"What was that?" Ginny asked, alarmed.

Suddenly, it seemed that the entire train had plummeted into sub zero temperatures. Helen shuddered and looked around fearfully. Ice was creeping across the windows...and she felt scared...it was a familiar feeling...something she hadn't felt in a long time...

A skeletal hand clutched the door and slid it open...Helen stood in the middle of the compartment staring at the rotting, hooded figure hovering at the door.

_Many colours blasted before her eyes - _

_-"not my baby! Please, kill me instead, don't hurt my little baby girl, please – have mercy – have mercy –"_

_-Vernon threw her into the cupboard. She had sprained her ankle thanks to Dudley pushing her on the stairs and the pain was blinding, she cried and that only made him yell louder-_

_-She was trapped in the darkness, the shadows looked like they would swallow her whole and Petunia said that no one would notice if she was gone-_

_-She saw _herself_, standing in the kitchen with the kitchen knives hovering around her. Vernon was on the floor, writhing under the blades pinning his hands to the floor-_

_-Petunia's body jerked and shuddered like a fallen marionette as the electricity tore her body apart-_

_-The boy with dark eyes and a cruel grin shoved her towards her bed. The look in his eyes was foriegn, but it chilled her to the bone and scared her beyond reason and she wanted needed help-_

_-Ripper was chasing her, attacking her legs and her hands as if she was a particularly large piece of prey-_

_-Marge stumbled backwards, the fire axe embedded in her skull. A pale hand reached out, yanked it out and slammed it in again and again-_

_-Blood, there was blood everywhere-_

_-A woman was giving birth. She was screaming and crying and blood poured out of her, it wasn't supposed to happen this way-_

_-the green light tormented her, a sickly dark green light that seemed to engulf the totality of her being-_

The images swam before her eyes. She felt terror and agony and fury and loss, it was all so much it hurt so much she wanted it to go away she wished she had been born blind she wished she had been born deaf and finally she wished she hadn't been born at all because so much suffering surrounded her-

Helen was screaming and screaming. The noise was a keening wail more frightening then even the dementor's aura, because it sounded like two people screaming in horror and loss at the same time.

Professor Lupin jumped to his feet and fired off a patronus. The glowing white light chased the monsterous nightmare away, its influence fading with it.

Helen dropped like a stone. Ginny cried in concern while Lupin quickly swept her up in his arms and checked her pulse. Helen seemed almost dead, her face so pale you could see her veins. Remus sternly ordered Ron, Hermione and Ginny to stay where they were while he rushed off and vanished in a crack of light.

**-Some Time Later-**

Helen's eyes slowly opened.

"Welcome back," A soft voice on her right said. Helen slowly and uncertainly pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked to her right. A girl with brown hair was giving her a smile that didn't reach her eyes, which were dark and fearful looking. "You're the only one who's been out for as long as I have..."

"What...what happened...?" Helen whispered. Her voice was hoarse and rusty from lack of use. "What...that horrible thing..."

"That was a Dementor." The girl said lowly. "Some sadistic psychopath – who may or may not be Black, I think – decided that they should be sent here to protect us." She let out a hollow laugh. "Well, before I even set foot on grounds they did more harm to me then Black ever did."

Helen leaned back against the back of her bed. "Who're you?" She asked after a moment.

"Right...sorry." The girl said softly. "I'm Hannah. Hannah Abott. We have Herbology together."

"Oh..." That was right. While her muddled mind hadn't recognized her immediately, now that she was awake she did in fact recognize Hannah. "I'm sorry...I just wasn't really awake..."

"I know...those things...there the worst thing hell ever spat out..." Hannah shivered.

"What...what do they do?"

"They make you experience all the worst things in your life. The scariest, the saddest, everything..." Hannah closed her eyes.

"...Why did they hurt you so much?"

"...I saw my father die. I saw it with my own eyes three years ago."

Helen immediately regretted asking. "I'm so sorry." She gasped.

Hannah looked down at her hands. "It's okay," She murmured. "After all, I know why they must be hurting you...it's only fair."

"...How long have we been here?" Helen asked uncertainly.

"Three weeks. Poppy told me when I came to. Said it was a trauma induced coma." Hannah responded lowly. "Dementors can do that to you."

"Oh, dear...Hermione, Ron and Ginny must be terrified..." Helen said in alarm. She wanted to run, but just sitting up caused pins and needles to prickle her entire body. She winced.

"I wouldn't do that," Hannah said as she watched. She smiled slightly. "We're not used to moving around, and Poppy might just finish you off if you leave without her say so."

"But what about my friends?"

"They'll be told once Poppy gets back...there was some sort of Quidditch accident and she was called down to the field."

"Okay..." For a moment, silence hung in the air between them. Helen, still reeling from the Dementor's touch, decided to try and break the ice – and focus on anything else. "Is there anything you like reading?"

A look of happiness and surprise flitted through Hannah's eyes. "I like _The Lord of the Rings_...my mum is muggle, you see."

**End Chapter**

**Next time, Sierra is misinformed about the nature of her mother's death and goes on a homicidal vengeance quest. Meanwhile, Remus notices that Helen isn't as together as most kids are and decides to investigate...can he prevent Sierra from knifing Sirius to death before she finds out about that certain rat?**

**Read and Review please!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: Whew. I really love writing this story. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 9: Traitor**

"Aren't you going to Hogsmeade, Helen?"

The redhead let out a dismal sigh. "No, Hannah. I couldn't get my form signed." More accurately, there was no one to sign it for her. So instead of going to get candy and play in the snow with Ron, Hermione and Ginny, Helen was stuck in the library with Hannah, who was similarly school-bound thanks to her overprotective mother. Now, Helen liked reading, but she would much prefer to be hanging around with her friends.

After finally being released from the infirmary, Helen had introduced Hannah to the rest of her friends. Ron was a little awkward around her – Helen couldn't figure out why – but Hermione and Ginny seemed to get along with her very well. It helped that Hermione could debate whether or not Denethor was a terrible person in Return of the King with Hannah for hours over dinner, until Ron was begging for a change of subject.

Hermione, personally, felt a little story for Denethor, as abysmally as he treated Faramir. The man had completely despaired – he placed all his hopes upon Boromir, only for his oldest son to die miles from home. The old man didn't even get a body to bury. Plus, he had been holding the line at Mordor's doorstep for years virtually alone.

Hannah on the other hand was less sympathetic. She believed that regardless of Boromir's death, Denethor had no excuse to abuse Faramir the way he did, and his refusal to man up and take charge during the Battle for Minas Tirith likely contributed heavily to the resulting casualties.

Helen would step in as a mediator whenever the argument got a little out of hand.

Hannah was a Hufflepuff, so she and Helen would have to meet in the library after classes to hang out. Since they were both trapped in this building, they decided they might as well stay there.

"It was nice of Hermione to offer to bring back some sweets for us." Hannah said wistfully.

Helen nodded. "Fred said something about getting some Zonko products for me too," She said. "But I don't really know how to use them..."

Hannah snickered. "That's easy. Just wait until Pansy Parkinson turns the corner and chuck it at her head."

Helen giggled uncertainly in response to the joke. While she didn't like Pansy any more then Hannah did, she couldn't consciously imagine hurting the other girl in any way – outside of telling her to stop taunting Hannah or calling Hermione or Ginny nasty names.

Why did Slytherins seem so convinced that blood had to be pure? Theirs didn't look any different from Hermione's – they all bled red. So why did it matter?

"They say Black has been sighted again," Hannah said in a low voice.

Helen's heart jumped and she stared at her friend in alarm. "Again? Where?"

"Just a mile from here." Hannah admitted, frowning. "The Headmaster keeps saying not to worry, but I can't help it...if Black got out of Azkaban, that means he's already gotten past the dementors once...if he does get in, we'll be trapped between him and those monsters..."

"Professor McGonagall will look after us," Helen said with wavering confidence. "She's very nice."

"I'm sure she is," Hannah said, biting her lip. "But Black probably learned dark magic straight from You Know Who's hand...who knows what he's capable of now..."

Helen shivered. "I just can't figure out _why _he did it..."

"He was evil, Helen. Just like his master and the rest," Hannah said flatly.

Helen shook her head. "But...no one's born evil...if he and my mom and dad were so close...why would he turn on them? Friends...friends are the most important thing outside of family...if you have something that precious, why give it up?"

"Power? Control over people?"

"...I guess...but even then...what would that be worth if your miserable and alone?"

"...Good question. I doubt they think that far ahead, though. Most of them are completely insane." Hannah looked thoughtful at this.

"...Black's been sighted again?"

Helen and Hannah both jumped to their feet when McGonagall's voice floated from down the hall. The two girls looked around for a minute before hiding between the wall and a bookcase. A moment later all the professors filed into the library, a low hum of urgency in their voices.

"...old habits die hard, Severus." Helen smiled a bit at Professor Lupin's voice. He was the new DADA teacher, and when she had gotten to his class he had kindly given her a list of what she needed to read to catch up and a bar of chocolate to go along with it. Plus, he was quite funny and his classes were always involving some frightening, fascinating creature. Just about everyone – save a few snobbish purebloods – loved him, which was a pretty mean feat in a school as divided as Hogwarts.

Snape made a small noise of disbelief.

"Not now, Snape." McGonagall barked.

"He's certainly done a marvellous job of avoiding detection," Professor Sprout said with a sigh.

"He can't hide forever," Flitwick said optimistically. "Being in Azkaban that long isn't good for your health. I'm sure he'll slip up at some point, and the Ministry will recapture him."

"Haven't you read the papers? The Dementors don't affect him the way they do the other prisoners. Fudge said that he went to Black's cell during the last investigation of Azkaban...said that Black spoke quite rationally to him, asked if he could finish the crossword."

Hannah shuddered at the implications.

"Does Helen know?"

"She doesn't know all of it; just enough to be on her guard. The poor thing would be heartbroken if she knew the full truth..."

Helen felt like a dementor was nearby again – an icy coldness was taking hold of her, through her heart and into her veins. What did that mean? What 'full truth'?"

"Yes...she can't be told." Sprout sounded very sympathetic. "That sweet little thing can't understand Parkinson's attitude...knowing that Sirius Black is her godfather would do her more harm then good."

Hannah gasped. "_What_?"

"To think that it came to this...I remember when Black was friends with you and her father, Remus. This must be hard for you as well..."

"I'll be fine," Remus said tiredly. He always seemed like he hadn't slept well. "It's Helen I'm worried about. Even after all these years...I still can't understand why Sirius gave James and Lily up to Voldemort."

The words were like an explosion, blowing everything into dust and spreading shock waves across the earth. Helen found herself lightheaded and dizzy, the words spinning through her mind.

_The green light, the woman screaming, that nightmare, her oldest nightmare, her mother dying, and it wasn't just Voldemort, she had been betrayed, someone gave her to Voldemort, she was loving and caring towards Black and he returned the sentiment with a knife in her back, her mother was dead because of him, her mother who loved her and died for her was gone when she could have been here with her-_

Hannah gripped Helen's shoulder to keep her from falling over, worry plastered all over her face. Helen didn't respond; she just shakily leaned back against the shelf and let out a small gasp of pain.

It was Sierra who Hannah attempted to comfort once the teachers had cleared out.

**In Professor Lupin's Office**

Remus Lupin was organizing his trunk when his door swung open with a bang. He turned around and came face to face with his honorary goddaughter.

Lupin had heard some whispers that Helen seemed...odd, especially among the older students. Once, Percy Weasley had voiced his concerns that the last Potter was emotionally unstable, given her sheer timidness and how easily she was hurt or frightened, much to the ire of his mother.

But Helen didn't look frightened or sad. She looked furious; her eyes narrowed into slits and her whole body rigid as steel. She didn't look anything like the girl who had stepped into his classroom and nervously requested a retest for the boggart quiz.

"How could you not tell me?" She demanded without preamble. Remus started. Her voice was different as well – it was harder and colder.

"Tell you about what?" Lupin asked with a sense of dread.

"About Marilyn Manrou," Helen responded scathingly, "Who the hell do you think? Black! Why the hell didn't you tell me that _miserable bastard _is the reason my parents are dead!?"

For a moment, Lupin was stunned silent.

His mind reeled with disbelief. Helen didn't rage, she wasn't sarcastic, and she definitely didn't swear. Was this an imposter? Some seventh year's idea to get her in trouble? Lord knew that Parkinson loathed her enough to do something like this...

"WELL!?" Helen demanded, grabbing a chair and throwing herself onto it. Her glare threatened to scorch his soul. "Why didn't you tell me that – why didn't you tell me you were one of my parent's _best friends_? When the _fuck _were you planning to enlighten me on those oh-so-unimportant little details!?"

Again. Lupin was utterly wrong-footed. Eventually he managed, "I only wanted to protect you from the truth."

Helen let out a hiss that sounded like a laugh strangled by incredulity. "Are you kidding me!? Protect me? If Black gets in here, I'm going to send him back to Azkaban personally, _one piece at a time!_"

That at least he had a reponse to. "No," He said firmly. "Helen, you can't approach him. He's far too dangerous."

"You have _no _idea what I am or am not capable of," Helen said spat out, jumping to her feet and crossing her arms.

Different body language from before...now she was confident and angry. Helen's movements were always shy and uncertain.

"I hope he finds me," Helen continued, tightening her fists until a drop of blood dripped down her left hand. "I'm going to make him feel _everything, _that utter bastard...I'm going to burn my mother's scream into the depths of his memory, I'm going to make him see nothing but the cupboard's darkness, and when he finally begs for mercy I'm going to send him screaming into hell!"

"NO!" Remus said, relieved with his voice came out strong and firm. When Helen gave him a furious glare, he said more quietly, "The Azkaban guards will catch him, Helen. Just stay as safe as possible. Would James or Lily want you to risk your life after they gave up so much so you could live?"

Helen's jaw twitched. "You mean the same useless guards he got past the first time?" She asked, rolling her eyes. "Seriously, if he got past them _there_, what the hell makes you think it would work this time?"

Remus hesitated. He hadn't thought of that before...neither had Fudge, but that was to be expected.

Helen spun on her heel. "Fine. Fuck it, don't answer. I didn't need you before, I don't need you now...but I swear, if anyone gets in the way of that bastard's karma, I'll kill them too."

With that, she stormed out of the room.

Remus leaned against his desk, shaken to the core by Helen's behaviour. _Cupboard...screams... threatening murder...and exposure to just one dementor put her in a coma for three weeks..._

_something is very, very wrong. Dumbledore said she'd be safe...but...if she was, what did I just see?_

He had to look into this. Seeing those green eyes burn with such hatred was more disturbing then the snake face of the Dark Lord himself.

**Later that Day**

Sierra paced in the Gryffindor Common Room, waiting. A double-edged, serrated knife glinted in the firelight and she continued to walk, her mind full of bloody images of how Black would look when she was done with him...

...that wasn't all...

Now she could see the green light clearly...the hooded figure who murdered her mother...her mother crying, begging for her life...begging for her child, not herself, even at the very end...

She could have grown up with her...there would never have been the Dursleys, there would just be her loving, caring mother and herself wandering through whatever life had in store for them...but some entitled bastard had decided that he had the right to take that away from her...

On the table was a list with several names on it. A list of people she hated. A list of revenge.

Draco Malfoy was at the top, marked off as "incapacitated." Lucius Malfoy was next to him, and he was marked as eliminated.

Under him, there was Lord Voldemort, marked off as, "eliminated?". Sierra was yet to be certain that their confrontation during first year had truly killed him, since he had returned from apparent death the first time...

there were a few more... "Gildory Lockhart", (eliminated), "Pansy Parkinson?" (perhaps), "Theodore Nott", (perhaps), but they weren't important. Not now.

Now she had a new name, in thick black ink that had splotched due to her shaking hand upon writing it. Sirius Black.

_You owe me a debt, Black..._

Sierra paused in her walking when she heard a noise. Their annoying new portrait, replaced when the Fat Lady got slashed up by an unknown assailant, was talking to someone...someone who didn't seem to remember the password.

_Could be Neville...or..._

Sierra stepped into the centre of the room, shifting her grip on the knife. Her heart was pounding with anticipation as the door swung open with a creak.

A filthy looking man entered the common room. He was wearing tattered grey prison robes, standard for an Azkaban inmate. His hair was matted and filthy, his skin grey and unhealthy, his eyes sunken and dark. Even though they had never met in her memory, Sierra knew instantly who he was.

Oddly, Black seemed almost surprised to see her. "...Helen?" He asked after a moment, his voice betraying his confusion.

"You thought I would run and hide, didn't you...?" Sierra seethed, taking a step forward. "Thought I would run and hide behind some strong wizard when the going got tough? Like you?"

Black stiffened. "You don't know what you're talking about..." He said sharply, "Move, please. I need to catch-"

A familiar wash of bright red coloured Sierra's vision. Then she lunged.

Black let out a startled gasp when Sierra struck him in the stomach, knocking them both over. Sierra raised the knife and brought it down, but Black twisted out of the way to avoid it leaving it to strike the floor.

Black pushed at her shoulders, trying to get her off, but Sierra sank her free fingers into his shoulder as she wrenched the knife free and tried again and again. She finally got a good aim at his neck, but Black managed to grab her knife hand before she could drive it in. With a grunt of effort, the starving convict rolled over and pushed Sierra across the floor – not too difficult, since neither her body wasn't very heavy.

"Wait!," Black demanded, his hair wildly flying about his face. "There's more you don't know – you have to listen to me-"

Sierra didn't dignify that with an answer – she threw a blast of magic energy at him, the same thing she used to shield herself from injury and projectiles. (it often came in handy during Quidditch matches, strangely enough.)

Black was thrown into the wall, striking his head against the old stone, but sheer stubbornness drove him back to his feet. Though he didn't have a wand, he was surprisingly quick on his feet for a man who had spent the last twelve years in an eight by eight stone cell.

"Listen!," He said with a fervent urgency, "Things aren't what they seem – you've been misinformed! What happened that night-"

Sierra spat on the floor, "Lying to save your hide, Black? Why not bust out your little magic grenade, that thing that killed all those helpless muggles? What's the matter, lost your nerve in Azkaban?"

She threw the knife through the air. Black swore and ducked to the right just before it struck the wall where his head would have been.

Commotion upstairs. The racket caused by the fight was waking people up, Sierra realized with a start. In her rage she had forgotten to be quiet, had forgotten this was the dorm room-

Black realized this as well, because he turned and ran out the door. Summoning her knife, Sierra gave chase, shooting down the stairs behind the black bur that was headed for the greenhouse. The pictures were shouting, the halls seemed darker in an attempt to hide him -

Sierra burst out out of the green house in time to see Sirius vanish in the trees. She picked up the pace until she became lost among the trees. Panting, she glanced back and forth around the trees. They were thick and dark; she couldn't hear Black's footsteps anymore.

"COME OUT AND FACE ME, YOU BASTARD!" She shrieked, balling her fists.

No answer came.

**End Chapter**

**...Yeah, Sirius, breaking into the Gryffindor Tower without any proof of Pettigrew's continued existence looks kinda bad. Probably should have disguised yourself as a lovable stray, then lying in wait for a good moment to spring up and transform Peter back into his human form. Boom, problem solved.**

**Read and Review please!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: (under desk) Hi! I'm hiding from Sierra. Hope you enjoy the new chapter! I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 10: Rats**

"Could you tell me what possessed you to chase after Black, Helen?" Remus asked, sliding a cup of hot chocolate across the table to the silent redhead. Hesitantly, Helen picked it up and took a sip – mostly, she was trying absorb the warmth from the cup. "Why do something so reckless?"

_I don't know! I didn't do anything! _"I'm sorry, Professor." Helen said, staring down at the table. "It's just...I was so _mad_...how...how could he..."

"I don't know, Helen." Professor Lupin said, his voice becoming distant as he remembered one of his former best friends.

"...Did my mother care about him?" Helen asked softly. The image of her mother from the picturebook Hagrid had given her flashed before her eyes. Her mother was so beautiful and seemed so lively in the image, not knowing she would meet a sudden and brutal end before she really got to live. "My dad, they were best friends weren't they?"

Remus looked sharply at her. "You know...?"

Helen hung her head slightly. "I was in the library when you were talking about it with Professor McGonagall." She admitted, staring into the depths of the brown swirls in her cup. "It's just...I don't understand...I...I suppose I just wanted to know why..."

_Sierra must have been furious, if she went after him..._

"That...that isn't the way I would have chosen for you to find out..." Remus gave her a deeply worried look.

Helen shook her head slightly, "It's fine, Professor."

"No, it isn't." Remus insisted, leaning forward. "Your safety and happiness is very important to me, Helen. I want you to feel like you can speak honestly with me."

"I know I can," Helen insisted. "It's just..." She bit her lip. How could she possibly explain the Blank Spaces to anyone? Sierra's reaction to the Hat back in the first year made it clear she didn't really want anyone to know...the hat seemed to think it was a bad thing, the two of them sharing this body...

"Are you sure? You were very upset when you came to see me last."

"I-I was?" Helen asked, confused. The last she remembered meeting Professor Lupin in his office was when she was asking for the backwork she had missed during the first few weeks.

The look of concern on Remus's face deepened. "Do you not remember? That was just yesterday afternoon."

"Oh...I...I was just trying not to think about it...with Black getting inside, I had sort of forgotten..."

_You are a terrible liar. _Helen could almost hear Sierra saying that to her.

Remus was silent for a moment, before he spoke again. "Has this happened to you before?" He asked intently. "Loosing recent memories?"

"I..." _What should I say? I want to trust him...he was mama's friend...but... _"A few times...it mostly happened before...before my aunt and uncle were killed." She set her cup down, her stomach twisting at the memory.

"Did you ever tell them?"

"No. I wasn't supposed to complain, unless it was serious." Helen responded.

Remus blinked. A darkness seemed to sink into the back of his eyes, which made Helen worried. "I mean, it wasn't anything that horrible," She said hastily. _No whining, _Vernon's voice echoed from the depths of her memory. _No one can stand a whiner. _

_Bastard. _

Helen blinked. That...that wasn't her thought. Quickly she shook it away. "It was strange," She insisted, "But I guess I'm just flighty, so I forget things sometimes."

"I can't say I agree with that," Remus said. His frown was deepening, Helen realized with a stab of panic. What was she doing wrong? "When you're in my classes, you're a very astute student. I imagine if I asked you about boggarts, you could answer quite easily off the top of your head."

"T-That's very nice of you, Professor. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Helen, I'm asking you...what's wrong?"

Helen bit her lip. "I don't know sir. I think I'm just upset. Being sad makes everyone think and act funny."

Remus sat back in his chair and was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I don't ever want you going out looking for Black again, do you understand? I want you to stay in here, as safe as possible. Remain in the girl's dorm for as long as you can stand it."

Helen nodded quickly. "Yes Sir."

"Helen," Remus hesitated, before saying, "Black did a terrible thing to your parents. Its understandable to want to get back at him...but Lily and James wouldn't want you to risk your life seeking revenge. They would want you to be safe."

Helen hesitated, before nodding.

Remus smiled gently at her before saying, "That's good. How about I walk you back to your dorm?"

"Thank you sir."

/

"...Was Blinky and _old _rabbit?" Hermione asked.

"N-No!" Lavander Brown sobbed as her best friend Pavarti held her arm and tried to comfort her. "He-he was just a baby...!"

"..Then how could you have dreaded him dying? I mean, think about it-"

"Hermione!" Helen exclaimed, aghast. "Stop being so mean!"

Hermione paused mid tirade to stare at the redhead, who so very rarely raised her voice above a whisper. Ron, Ginny, Hannah and Pavarti looked equally surprised, though none more then Helen herself.

Taking a deep breath, she continued, "Hermione, poor Lavander just lost her dear pet, and you're using it to prove a point? While also belittling her for believing in something? That...that's really insensitive! I...I think you should say sorry!"

Hermione gaped at her. Hannah seemed to snap out of her stupor at that, and she immediately moved to back Helen up.

"She's right, Hermione. Besides, how can you be so sure you're right and Divination is 'wolly' and 'not real magic'? You know what else is supposed to be impossible by non-magical standards? Violating every law of physics with the flick of a piece of wood. Unicorns, centaurs and dragons aren't supposed to exist either, yet they do. This isn't a place for hypothesis – especially when you don't have all the facts." Crossing her arms, she added, "Say sorry to Lavander while you're at it."

Hermione flushed a deep red. She stammered an apology to Lavander before hurrying out of the room.

"Oh!" Helen said in distress, "I didn't mean to make her upset...!"

"It's alright," Pavarti said in response, rubbing Lavander's back to help her ease her sobs. "Sometimes you have to be a little mean when someone else is being mean. Hermione will come around...once she realizes she was doing the wrong thing."

Helen let out a small sigh of relief at that.

"T-thank you Helen." Lavander sniffed.

"It's no trouble," Helen said with a brave little smile, before hesitantly squeezing Lavander's hand in what she hoped was a comforting way. Lavander managed a small smile at her while Pavarti beamed.

"You're so nice, Helen. Thanks again." Pavarti said. Helen blushed while Ron and Ginny voiced their agreement with that.

/

It turned out that Pavarti was right. Eventually Hermione emerged from the library, red eyes and morose, before asking Helen if they were still friends. Helen anxiously assented that they were, and the regular dynamic between them and the Weasleys was restored in fairly short order.

Until Scabbers went missing.

"It's that cat! He's had it out for Scabbers ever since you got him!"

"Crookshanks doesn't understand its wrong, Ron!" Hermione said, protectively holding her enormous pet cat against her chest. "All cats chase rats, Ron!"

"Ron, calm down!" Helen said, stepping between them. "Scabbers seems pretty smart to me, I bet he just ran off somewhere. How about we look for him after dinner? I'm sure he'll be here somewhere."

Ron, while still somewhat angry at Hermione and her cat, nodded reluctantly in assent to this.

After dinner, the group of friends split up. Ginny and Hannah left with Hermione to search through the gardens outside to see if Scabbers was hiding outside while Ron and Hermione decided to comb the basement for secret mice holes.

"This is hopeless," Ginny sighed as they regrouped. The sun was going down soon and they had nothing to show for it. "Even if Scabbers was still alive, there's no way we'll find him."

"Ron will be very sad," Hannah observed.

"It's funny," Ginny said, carefully stepping around a rose bush, "Ron used to complain all the time that Scabbers was boring and useless – he was bitter that he had gotten the rat from Percy instead of getting his own owl for school."

Hannah frowned, "Wait a minute. You said that Percy had it first? For all seven years?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Common rats don't usually live that long." Hannah responded, her brow furrowing. "A normal lifespan for one of them is up to three, maybe four years. Did Scabbers have any magical properties?"

"Not that I know of." Ginny answered. Now she was frowning too. "He's been in my family for twelve years now."

Helen shivered all of a sudden. A feeling of foreboding was building up inside her...it was like she was being watched.

"...Hey! There you are, you little monster! C'mere!" Ginny suddenly lunged for the garden and grabbed a familiar brown mouse. Hannah cheered, neither girl noticing that their friend hadn't said a word and didn't seem to be paying attention.

Helen stood frozen to the spot. A massive spectral dog was standing barely a yard away from her, jaw frozen in a snarl. It looked exactly like the Grim that Ron had described to her in Divination class.

"Helen, I found...him..."

"Run. RUN!" Helen screamed as the dog lunged towards them.

All three girls immediately took off in the direction of Hagrid's cabin – the grim was effectively blocking their only way back into the school. Hannah threw a body bind curse over her shoulder, hoping to slow the beast down. The grim dodged, but it was forced to slow for a moment allowing them to get a slight lead on him.

/

"As amusing as I'm sure you found it, the teachers are wondering how the dungbombs got down into Filch's office." Professor Lupin said, facing a very particular pair of redhaired twins.

"Of course, sir."

"After all, we were found on the third floor weren't we?" Fred and George Weasley's twinspeak had supposedly driven their first Defence teacher to utter insanity. The man was still interned in St Mugos.

Professor Lupin reached out a hand expectantly. Exchanging a sad look, Fred and George obligingly handed over a worn piece of paper.

"...How did you get this?" Remus asked, going slightly pale.

"Whatever are you asking, Professor?" Fred asked innocently.

"After all, it's just a piece of paper." George added.

"I think not," Remus responded mildly. Pointing his wand at the page, he intoned, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." Immediately, the map came to life, filling with the names of everyone inside Hogwarts. The twins gasped.

"When did... ...!" Remus broke off his speech to stare at the page. Out in the gardens, near Hagrid's cabin and approaching the Whomping Willow, were several names.

Familiar names.

"...Stay here!" Remus ordered before rushing off, leaving the befuddled redheads behind.

/

"AGH!"

"Ginny!"

Ginny screamed when the massive dog barrelled into her, knocking her back towards the tree. She suddenly found herself falling, a spike of pain struck the back of her head, and then there was nothing.

The dog slowed to a stop. The rat had gotten himself pinned beneath Ginny's arm. With a swish of dried leaves, the dog morphed into a ragged young man. Sirius Black looked down at the pale, motionless redhead, aghast.

"Oh no..." He hadn't meant to hurt her. He had just meant to startle her into letting go of Pettigrew...oh god, she had hit her head against the rocks. Sirius reached out and pressed his fingers against her neck. She still had a pulse. Carefully he raised her head up and searched for blood.

"Thank god." He whispered. Grabbed the rat with one hand, he carefully lifted Ginny up in his arms. There was a bed up the stairs where he could put her...

Staggering up the stairwell, Sirius put Ginny down.

Raising "Scabbers" in one hand, he raised his wand to change him back when a furious redhead burst into the room.

**End Chapter**

**(facepalms) Sirius, Sirius...you _do _realize how bad this looks, right? You're really not good at this whole stealth thing are you?**

**Read and Review please!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Sierra: It's _amazing _how stupid you people can be.**

**Wanda: ...Well, they mostly know Helen. And Helen's nice to the point of naivety. You should be grateful - it's the perfect cover. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 11: Confrontations**

Sierra threw the blast spell at Sirius's chest, knocking him over backwards and throwing him into the wall. Running across the room, she knelt down next to Ginny and checked for a pulse as Hannah came hurtling up behind her.

Sirius, still bearing some bruises from his last encounter with Sierra, realized that he had to act quickly to get them to believe him. Straining for his wand, he saw Pettigrew attempting to flee through the door and cast the detransformation spell on him.

Hannah whirled around to see "Scabbers" writhe and warp into a fully grown, thirty-something year old man. Sierra's head snapped up from where she was checking on Ginny; it was the first time she had ever really been surprised by something since Luna.

A stunned silence hung over the house for a minute while Peter Pettigrew whimpered and struggled to right himself.

Once again – like he always had – Peter attempted to run. But Sierra snapped out of her shock very quickly. Immediately, with a flick of a wrist she slammed him against the wall with a blast of magic just before shutting the door. Hannah broke out of her confusion a moment later, stepping forward to hold up Peter at wand point while Sierra looked between him and Sirius.

"What's going on?" She asked icily.

"Y-You have to b-believe me! Black-Sirius-"

"Shut UP! YOU'VE BEEN SLEEPING IN GINNY AND RON'S **BED**!" Sierra shouted, storming over to Pettigrew and slugging him in the face. Hannah moved her wand to Sirius, though she watched Sierra in fear, confusion and concern.

"Is she okay?" Hannah asked worriedly.

"She's fine. She's just unconscious." Sierra said with thinly disguised rage. "But she got very, very lucky...hitting her head against solid rock like that..." She turned her attention towards Black again, eyes blazing. "You bastard..."

Sirius backed up, his eyes dark. "I swear, it was an accident...I was just trying to make her let go of Pettigrew...I underestimated the force of my jump." He defended. "I was desperate to tell you the truth."

"What truth?" Sierra demanded coldly.

"Him." Sirius said, pointing his finger at Pettigrew. "He betrayed your parents. Not me. Peter was the spy for over a year."

"...You expected me to believe that?" Sierra asked icily, glancing between him and Pettigrew.

"He's alive, isn't he?" Sirius said with a low sense of urgency. "Supposedly I killed him and all those non magicals...but I couldn't have done that if he's still here, can I? He did it...held his wand behind his back, shouted 'Lily and James, how could you!?' before firing off that blast...transformed into a rat and sped off into the sewer to hide."

Sierra stood in silence before turning her head towards Peter.

The mousy man immediately shrank away from her, "I didn't! I couldn't have! It was him...it was him I swear..."

"...Hannah, keep him there," Sierra said darkly as she walked towards Peter. Hannah nodded slowly in stunned silence, though she kept her wand pointed at Sirius.

For a moment, Sierra stood in silence in front of Peter, staring down at him with unfathomably dark eyes. Then she pointed a finger at him and her eyes turned blood red.

Peter screamed in pain as images were torn from his memory; flares of him sneaking off and speaking with black robed men, him standing at the side and watching Voldemort murder someone who he had delivered to the death eaters, and finally Peter whispering an address into the ear of his true master.

Sierra stumbled backwards once she released his memory.

Tears dripped down her face. _"not my baby – please -" _Her mind spun, her breath came out unevenly. _She could have been here..._

"Helen? Helen?"

"_not my name..."_

"What?"

"You bastard... ...!"

Hannah let out a frightened cry when a familiar knife appeared in Sierra's hands, which escalated into a scream when she jumped at Peter and buried it in his chest.

Peter screamed, Hannah screamed, Sirius jumped to his feet. Blood splattered Sierra's arms and face; she drove the knife in three more times before a blur appeared at the entrance.

"Expelliarmus!" The knife was yanked away by a mysterious force. Remus had appeared at the doorway, and he was staring aghast at his goddaughter.

Sierra stumbled to her feet. Her eyes were still glowing red, her face twisted in a grotesque amalgamation of grief and revenge-driven fury. Blood splattered her face, her lips pulled back in a snarl. She looked almost inhuman.

Peter whimpered at her feet, though he tried to drag himself towards Remus. Sierra lunged after him and drove her foot into his back.

"_**YOU KILLED MY MOTHER!**_"

She wrapped her hands around his neck, and Remus couldn't see any other choice. _Forgive me! _"STUPIFY!"

The spell hit Sierra head on; she was so lost in rage she hadn't given any thought to shielding herself. She collapsed to the floor, her hair spilling out around her.

****Later****

Sierra was groggy.

_...mother..._

What had hit her? Her head felt like she had been on the business end of a cast iron baseball bat. Her entire body felt like lead.

_...Peter...Sirius..._

Fuck!

She sat up quickly, flinching when her thirteen-year-old body protested her every twitch with a flood of pins and needles.

"Helen...you're awake now..."

Sierra looked to her right. Hannah, Ginny, Luna, Hermione and Ron were all next to her bedside, all of them looking extremely worried and a little nervous.

Hermione decided to break the silence. "...Are you okay?"

Sierra looked away. "...What do you think?"

"...I'm really sorry, Helen. We didn't want to stun you, but if Peter had died in the shack, Sirius wouldn't have been proven innocent."

"..."

"Dumbledore confirmed it, and Minister Fudge has been given no choice but to accept it given the fact that Peter is still alive. Sirius didn't betray your mum and dad to – to – to you know who."

"... Call him Voldemort, Ron." Sierra said without moving. "He'd kill you either way. He's nothing but a crazy disillusion prick anyhow."

Her friends exchanged concerned looks. This whole business about her parents betrayal and death was really hurting her, they decided. It would rattle anyone to discover such things, and Helen had always been gentle and very fragile.

No wonder she had a bit of a breakdown – they probably would have reacted the same way.

"Don't you want to go see Sirius?"

"..."

"Helen?"

"Fine. But...I'd like to go by myself."

"He's innocent, Helen." Hermione repeated, looking a little anxious. "Professor Dumbledore made sure of it."

Sierra slowly swung her legs over the side and muttered, "I believe you, Hermione. I saw it all in his head." Then she walked off slowly, limping slightly as she went thanks to cramped and tired muscles.

**%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;%&amp;**

Sirius was standing in the office quietly talking to Fudge when Sierra was lead into the office by McGonagall. Dumbledore stood up, but the older woman shook her head and gestured that they should leave.

Sirius, wanting to break the silence, guffawed and rubbed his neck. "You've got a mean punch, kitten." He remarked.

For a moment, Sierra said nothing. Then... "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why didn't you take me with you?" Sierra responded, clenching her fists slightly. "Weren't you there? The night Hagrid took me away and left me with my _family_." She spat the word out.

Sirius swallowed and took a step forward so he was standing in front of her. "You're right, I should have been there for you. I don't have any excuses. It was...I saw your mother and father's bodies. I had suggested we might need to switch keepers for the spells...there were a few times where Voldemort and Bellatrix had managed to get the jump on me, and I was starting to worry...I thought Pettigrew was the perfect bluff. But he wasn't loyal. I went to your home and found your mother and father...James and Lily...dead. And it was all my fucking fault."

"... ... Voldemort killed them." Sierra said in a quiet, matter of fact sort of way. "Peter had the choice between saving his own hide and handing them over to that monster...and _he _chose to let them die. Not anyone else...he was just too weak to do anything but cower behind others who protected him...the minute he was in the line of fire, he panicked. It had nothing to do with you."

There were types like Peter back in the asylum. Narcissists, mostly – they would talk themselves up to be god's envoys, but when things went south they were yelling for their bodyguards.

She always knew who her enemies were. Besides, she would have gone after Pettigrew too.

Except, she would have managed to rip his spine out through his throat before the aurors subdued her.

And she still would.

**End Chapter**

**Next chapter, while Fudge and everyone else are sorting papers, Sierra sneaks off to the holding cells by herself. Three guesses as to what happens next. **

**Read and Review please!**


	12. Chapter 12

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: (chuckling) Oh, I cant wait to put you in the Tri Wizard Tournament...!**

**Helen: (nervously) Why? Is it...dunking for apples?  
**

**Wanda: That would be nice, wouldn't it? ...But this is the wizard world we're talking about. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 12: Taking Revenge**

Sierra loathed how medieval the Ministry was.

She hated the look of it, she hated how self important everyone acted and how they sneered down at the obvious fact that Pettigrew was alive, continuing to question Sirius about the incident when it was clear he was innocent. Touching on painful memories over and over even when the verdict was obvious... he was going to get off, no matter how much Fudge

They didn't want to admit what they had done to him, they didn't want to own up to it.

Sierra seethed silently on this as she confunded every person who saw her making her way down to the Ministry holding cells, temporary placement before transfer to Azkaban.

_Walls break, yet people stubbornly cower behind them..._

Sierra clasped her gloved hands together as she made her way through the dark. The brass knuckles, she mused, weren't the best or cleanest way to go – but out of all of them, they would cause the most painful death that he couldn't be saved from.

Sure, leaving him to bleed out would have been better, but the healers would have fixed him up before he hit the two day mark.

She walked up to his door. There was little light in the basement of the building – the only sources were torches placed at every other cell. Her fists clenched convulsively before she cast the unlocking spell and stepped inside the room, letting the door slam shut behind her.

Peter squawked like a strangled parrot when he looked up and saw her. He was chained up with charmed containment to ensure he couldn't transform to escape, as illustrated when he attempted to pull away from her. The chains glowed blue and gave him a shock, causing him to fall on his face.

Sierra said nothing. She just grabbed his hair and drove her fist into his nose. The wet cracking noise echoed in the silent room.

_Crack! _Broken cheekbones. Blood flooded from the broken nose; Peter sputtered and whined unable to cry out. _Crack! _Dislocated shoulder; pushed too far back to the point of almost snapping straight off. _Crack! _That was the ankle, then the left foot. _Crash! _On both sides of the head. Deafening sound bursts eardrums.

_-Vernon had knocked her over the cupboard was pitch black there was all sorts of pain. She heard her mother's cry, pleading for her life, her, the monster, the freak, she was willing to die to save her. And she wouldn't have lost her if this little bastard had just kept his mouth shut-_

_Crack! Crack! CRACK! _

Eventually, there was very little left unbroken in Peter's body. His cries had sputtered out into pathetic whimpering after the violent onslaught slowed to a stop.

Sierra took a breath, pausing. Her cheeks were sticky and she was tired. Only the dull throb of her anger kept her going. She stepped around Peter's body and grabbed him by the neck. Focusing her magic through her hand, she wrenched upwards.

Blood sprayed across the wall as Peter's screams were cut off as his spine was ripped out in a single stroke. Sierra dropped the skull to the floor, the eyes buggy with terror still, her whole body covered in gore.

With a disinterested flick, she cleaned off her clothes with a spell before turning around and leaving the cell to rejoin her godfathers.

****Later****

"This is just temporary," Sirius said, gesturing towards the decrepit building in front of them. Sierra crossed her arms and scoffed at the address. Grimmauld place.

"For the 'greatest family' there is, they made sure to pick the shittiest house on the block." She remarked dryly.

She didn't miss the look Remus gave Sirius after she said that. If Sirius had caught on, he gave no sign of it, because he just laughed in agreement.

"You're right. I plan on changing up...maybe with a vacation home in the Bahamas." The older man said. Sierra let out a sharp laugh of her own as they stepped up onto the porch.

"Be careful not to make any noise when we pass through the hall," Remus warned her. "Sirius's mother has a portrait that will scream foul slurs at us if disturbed."

"Lovely woman," Sierra said in disgust, making a mental note to step out to the non magical section of London for some paint thinner.

Sirius sighed when they entered the kitchen and looked around. "I can't wait to get out of here," He muttered. "Doesn't look too much different from the Azkaban cells..."

_Or the cupboard. _Sierra thought as she examined the soot covered floor and broken table.

With a _crack_, a house elf appeared on the floor. He was a fifthly, old and dangerous creature, with a permanently hateful expression.

"Blood traitor master has come home, befouling the house, bringing the creature with him...and mudblood spawn, oh what would poor mistress think-"

That was as much as Kreacher managed to get out before Sierra kicked him across the room. This pair of boots had steel toes, so it was more painful than it normally would have been. He crashed against the sink, causing a pot to fall on his head once he crumpled to the floor.

"Listen up!" Sierra snapped. "You keep your mouth shut, you get to keep your windpipe. How does that sound?"

While the girl finished intimidating the old elf, Remus turned to face a stunned Sirius. "We need to talk about Helen," He said under his breath.

****Later****

The two remaining Mauraders waited until they were sure Helen had fallen asleep before heading downstairs to converse.

"I thought she was just upset about Peter...the little bastard is the reason her parents are dead..."

"That's what I thought in the beginning, but I think there's more to it than that. That's not how Helen behaves – not at all! She's quiet, gentle and timid. I've never heard her swear, and she certainly wouldn't have kicked Kreacher or threatened to maim him no matter how nasty he was to her. It's just not in her nature."

"Then – then what was all that about?"

"I don't know. There's something else – the day after she came down demanding to know why I hadn't told her about our friendship in the past, I asked her about it and she didn't know what I was talking about. It was as if she couldn't remember anything that had happened in the afternoon."

"What!? That...that can't be normal..."

"No. She tried to brush it off as stress, but not before mentioning she had experienced this before...most prominently when she lived with Lily's sister."

"Dumbledore sent her to live with _them_!? I met that lady once! She hated Lily and everything to do with her! She looked like she'd swallowed a lemon when Lily brought James over to the family Thanksgiving dinner!"

"I had my reservations about it, as well, but they didn't listen to me." Remus lowered his head. "They wouldn't even let me visit..."

"What!? Bullshit! You could have visited her perfectly fine three out of the four weeks of the year! Those bas-"

"You don't have to, Sirius...anyway, I did a bit of digging into the history about the Dursleys before you brought Peter into the Shrieking Shack." Remus pasued and bit his lip.

"What? What, what happened Remus?" Sirius asked in alarm. "I know that face. What did they do to Helen?"

"The police files were sealed, so I didn't get any specific details except for the most important. They were murdered three years before Helen came to Hogwarts."

"What!?"

"That's not all. Before Professor McGonagall brought her here, she had been living in a mental hospital for children."

Sirius sprang out of his chair, unleashing a long string of curses directed at Dumbledore, the Dursleys and Voldemort that would make a Navy Seal proud. Remus, knowing how fruitless it was to control the man's temper since they were children, simply sat patiently after throwing up a silencing charm around them. (for a certain painting).

"...tie his beard in a knot and _strangle _him with it, the bastard! _He said she would be safe_!"

"Sirius, calm down..."

"Calm down? _Calm down!? _Those bastards hurt my goddaughter! Remus, what's wrong with her?"

"The official diagnosis...according to the muggle doctors...dissociative identity disorder."

"I-I've never heard of that..."

"Neither have I...I wasn't able to look anything up in the time I had. But for now, I think we have to be careful around her."

"How...how do we treat this?"

"I don't think there's anything specific we _can _do...but what I read about gave us some clear cut options. No stress. Plenty of fun, relaxation, in some non cluttered place. Surround her with people she knows and likes. Things like that."

"...Great. Then the Bahamas it is."

**End Chapter**

**Next time, Helen has some fluffy bonding with Sirius, Remus and her friends while Dumbledore plots a tri wizard tournament competition. I dunno about you, but I can't see this turning out well at all...**

**Read and Review please!**


	13. Chapter 13

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Helen: (playing with her friends)**

**Sierra: (scowling) Oh, how sweet. I'm never going to get to enjoy summer break at this rate.**

**Wanda: (reading ahead in the script) Yeah, about that...just be a bit patient. You'll have plenty of walking around to do very, very soon. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 13: Warm Waters**

Helen giggled hysterically as she dunked Hermione underwater. The bookworm let out a loud squeak when she emerged, and retaliated by splashing water into the redhead's face. She ended up hitting Ginny as well, and the situation quickly dissolved into a four way battle between Helen, Hermione, Ginny and Hannah.

Sunlight shone down on the group at the beach; the weather at the Bahamas was always brilliant and warm. Ron was sitting further up the beach, trying to create houses and castles out of sand. A bit further back, Remus and Sirius were sitting in beach chairs, acting cheerful while secretly skimming over Helen's psyche file.

"...Prone to violent outbursts when traumatic memories are triggered...frayed temper...loss of memory when other personalities surface...I can't believe no one noticed this in the whole time Helen was at Hogwarts." Sirius said in a mixture of disbelief and anxiety.

"Should we contact St Mugos?" Remus asked heavily. The question had been dangling over them heavily ever since the subject came up.

Sirius bit his lip. "I...I want her to be healthy...but she looks so happy right now. Maybe she's getting better...? And there are a lot of people who would be dying to use that against her..."

"I know you're worried...but we can't leave this unaddressed." Remus said seriously.

"I never said we should!" Sirius said hastily. "It's just...I don't want this to colour anyone's judgement of her."

Distant laughter caught their attention again. Helen was bobbing up and down with the waves in the surf while Ginny had gotten knocked over. The older girls laughed as she sputtered indigently before Helen took her hand and helped keep her up straight.

"Look at that," Sirius said with a hint of nostalgia. "They're actually getting to be kids...remember our time back in school?"

"The first three years, when we became friends, it was like this...but the shadow of war was there even at the beginning, wasn't it? We just didn't recognize it until it was too late." Remus agreed sadly. "By fourth year, all the 'pranks' were really attacks, no matter what we told ourselves. Attacks on people we suspected of being Death Eaters."

Sirius rubbed his forehead. "I had a lot of time to think inside that tiny cell." He said morosely, not noticing Remus flinch slightly when the subject came up. "Looking back at it...gods, I was such a brat, Remus. I don't know how you put up with us. I was so desperate not to be like my family that I went so far in the other direction I was a bully myself."

"We all have regrets." Remus said quietly. "But our past shouldn't dictate their future." He gestured towards the children in the water.

"At least Peter can't seek out his master now." Sirius said.

Both men flinched slightly. Peter's gruesome death had been front page news in many places. Despite their loathing of the man for betraying James and Lily, the way he had died had shaken both of them to the core. They both still remembered, even if they didn't want to acknowledge it, back when Peter had been their nervous, shy friend.

Neither of them knew how to truly feel.

****Later that Night****

"Padfoot?"

"What is it, Kitten? Having trouble sleeping?" Sirius asked, surprised to see her up.

Even when he had been on the run, having just escaped from Azkaban, Sirius had been plagued by nightmares, manifested from his fears and horrors that had been dragged to the surface for all those years. He saw Regulus, his baby brother, murdered by Voldemort. He saw James die, remembered being cast from the family...he had faked sleep to fool Remus, who worried too much for his own good, but he preferred to stay awake when he could.

He thought after the day, Helen would have been tired enough to go right to sleep. "Can I ask you something?" The petite redhead asked, sitting down on the couch and snuggling trustingly up to his side.

Sirius smiled and petted her hair. "Sure. What is it?"

"Tell me about mama. What was she like?"

"Did your aunt not tell you about her?"

"No...she didn't like talking about it. She didn't have pictures either."

Sirius decided he didn't particularly care that Petunia had been murdered at that point. "Well, your mother was pretty amazing. Always was. I think your dad fell in love with her after she blasted an older Slytherin into unconsciousness when he attacked her best friend. She had an incredible spirit. She had strength and compassion, intelligence and kindness."

"Sometimes she had trouble forgiving people; it was one of her few flaws. I think that's why she and James didn't get along in the first few years – James didn't like her friend Sn-Severus." Sirius grimaced, pleased he had caught himself at the last second.

"Y-You mean Professor Snape? He was mama's friend?" Helen blinked owlishly before biting her lip. "So that's why he was so nice to me, even though I was a Gryffindor...everyone said he hated everyone not a Slytherin."

_That's partly my fault, even if I don't care to admit it. _"Yeah, he was her first ever friend; he told her about the magical world and they stuck together for a long time despite pressure otherwise."

"Why can't people between houses be friends?" Helen asked, frowning slightly. "I'm friends with Hannah, she's really smart and everything..."

"It was part of the war." Sirius admitted. "the Dark Lord drew his friends from Slytherin and Dumbledore had been a Gryffindor in his day."

Helen hummed in understanding. "Padfoot?"

"Yeah?"

"Will I see mama again sometime?"

"...Yeah. Eventually. But don't worry – she's always watching you and always loves you, no matter what."

Helen smiled slightly at that. She fell asleep against his shoulder some time later, and Sirius carried her back to her room. When he went to sleep himself, no nightmares disturbed him.

**End Chapter**

**I felt like I should give poor Helen a little breathing room before I tossed her and Sierra into the Tri Wizard Tournament, so Bahamas vacation! Don't worry, Sierra will be front and center for most of year four...and that's going to go about as well as you can expect. How bad is it? Well, you'll see soon enough.**

**Read and Review please!**


	14. Chapter 14

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: I've officially found a theme song for Sierra - when she's on screen, I recommend to put on either Pretty Little Psycho or This Little Girl while she wrecks the house. Personally, I listened to the nightcore versions while writing this.**

**Sierra: Nightcore? What, that chipmunk crap?**

**Wanda: (indigently) I'll like whatever I happen to enjoy. I don't bug you over being a secret Elvis Fan. (slams hands over mouth; Sierra glares at me.)... I do not own Harry Potter. (teleports away, Sierra curses and goes after me.)**

**Chapter 14: Chaos at the Quidditch World Cup**

"Blimey, dad! How far up are we?" Ron asked, exhausted from trekking up the metal stairs of the Quidditch Arena. Helen patted him on the shoulder as she passed him, causing him to give her a slightly betrayed look.

"Well at this rate, if it rains, we'll be the first to know." Hannah noted, giving the clouded over sky an uncertain look.

"Don't worry about that Hannah," Arthur said with a kind smile. "The organizers made sure that no sudden storm would ruin today."

Helen smiled. Sirius had bought the extra tickets so they could all go on this excursion together; he and Remus were tied up with work at the Ministry. He had teased her about it when she asked what it was, saying that it would be a very interesting school year.

Remus had chimed in at this point, saying in a very deadpan voice that he hoped it was a different sort of interesting from usual. Sirius had looked a little nervous at that, but he said that he was certain this would go through without any trouble.

Arthur had already gotten tickets for his kids, so he offered to take care of Helen while they were out. Remus didn't seem too happy had her going without them, but Sirius relented.

Her dogfather had secretly promised himself that he would spoil her rotten to make up for not being there when she had lived with the Dursleys and at the hospital.

Ginny was nearly bouncing with glee; there wasn't a bigger Quidditch fanatic in the whole world. (or at least, that was Helen's opinion) She had a green hat and green face paint to make it clear who she was supporting. Helen had declined to do the same, though she took a small Irish banner to wave whenever the game went in their favour.

Hannah and Hermione were less interested but didn't want to miss a chance to go out to such a big event. The sailing hadn't been entirely smooth; Helen had to calm Hermione down after she saw one of the aurors casually oblivate the ticket man's memory when Arthur accidentally tried to pay him with galleons instead of muggle pounds. While she was upset too, she figured that the auror would apologize afterwards and give him some compensation.

(Pansy once said that the meek girl who lived was stupidly naive. Helen had taken that as a compliment.)

The game was just as exciting as Ron had hyped it up to be. Ginny would be teasing him over his man crush on Viktor Krum for quite a while yet, though it was probably good for him that Fred and George were distracted by the betting pool they had joined. (much to Arthur's distress)

Helen was very impressed by how well Viktor could fly. That looked terrifying! Especially the move he pulled to catch the snitch. Her heart was pounding like mad during those final moments of the game, to the point where Hermione had to tap her on the shoulder to reveal that the family was starting to head back to the tent.

All in all, it was an exciting end to an idyllic summer.

So naturally, it all came to a screeching halt when the screaming started in the middle of the night.

****That Night****

Sierra was on her feet at the first fire explosion.

She heard it before anyone else; Ginny was still taunting Ron over his fanboy crush while Fred and George argued with their father over the money they had won through a bet with this guy named Ludo Bagman. Hermione and Hannah were looking at a book together.

Running over to the entrance of the larger-on-the-inside tent, Sierra yanked the blinds open and stared out across the campgrounds.

Fires were started further away from them. Some people were starting to scream and run away, yelling hysterically for others to do the same. In the distance, she saw something that made her blood boil.

Pointed dark hats and skull masks. They were all headed her way.

"Mr Weasley!" She yelled, sticking her head into the tent. The man jerked and stared at her. Hermione, having heard that tone of voice from her friend before, immediately leapt to her feet.

"What is it, Helen?"

"Trouble, _big _trouble, headed this way. It's a riot! We need to go _now_!" Sierra barked.

Luckily, Arthur was no fool. He immediately told his oldest sons to take all the kids back to the portkey and to stay together. Sierra initially followed, holding Hermione's hand, looking for a thicker part of the stampeding mob where she could be 'separated' from the group.

_Like they'll be stopped when we're _running.

Hermione let out a cry of alarm when Sierra slipped free of her hand and disappeared into the sea of faces. Thankfully, Fred and George were taking their jobs seriously and didn't notice that she wasn't with them.

_They may need more time to reach the portkey. It's time to put some distance between them and these death fuckers._

Sierra turned around and summoned her guard aura wordlessly. Her eyes scanned the crowd and picked out the rapidly approaching group, counting ten, twenty...

_Just thirty five men? Are you shitting me? Just thirty five idiots verses thousands of people armed with WOMDs and they're running like a bunch of kids? No wonder they were loosing the war, for fuck's sake. Even if none of them had wands, we could stampede over them and not loose even a quarter of the total people here!_

While the crowd fled, Sierra threw a banishing spell through the air so it would land directly in the middle of the Dark Lord's fanboy posse. As she planned, they were scattered in every direction. _Good. Let the hunt begin. _

Sierra started from the far right and worked her way forward. The two she picked out first didn't even see her coming. One severing charm and a head went rolling across the dirt. The man shouted, stumbling backwards, fumbling with his wand as he tried to focus on Sierra through the smoke and haze. Sierra immediately transfigured herself a pike and rammed it through the man's chest with another banishing spell.

Not all of them were just setting fires. Sierra came upon a group trying to rape the ticket man's wife. She castrated them all in a few seconds, yanking them away from her in transfigured cords.

She strangled the first one with the cords alone, allowing the others to watch. She couldn't see under their masks but a slight stenches informed her that this change of dynamic was unexpected and unwanted. She gave them a smile utterly lacking even her most demented humour.

Noticing they had forced the woman to hover so they could all get a shot, she looped the cord around a hook and forced the second man to hang himself. The pressure nearly knocked his eyes out of his skull and there was an audible snap when his neck broke.

The third one died pitifully – choked to death on his own vomit when she forced him to eat slugs. The last one was given a relatively painless, but no less horrifying death – Sierra simply accioed his heart straight out of his chest. She smirked at him and crushed it in her first right before his dying eyes.

Sierra released the woman from the spell and told her to run north with the crowd. The woman thanked her profusely before pulling her clothes back into place and bolting into the smoke.

Sierra kept moving. _Two people can send a message. _She blew another DE's legs off before 'disarming' his partner. She gave herself a slight image changing spell – Lockhart's 'personal appearance tips' could be useful for something after all, she thought with cold delight.

She looked like a corpse. To the eyes of anyone seeing her, her eyes were bloody sockets, her hands longer than they should be, shoulders sets to wide, blood pouring from multiple scars on her body and a hole in her shoulder.

Of course, she wasn't injured...but that wasn't the point. The next Death Eater who saw her and shit himself because of it...that was the point.

Sprinting through the fallen tents and broken instruments, Sierra noticed that several of the Death Eaters had teleported away – either because they saw resistance or because they figured their job was done, that she couldn't tell. However, there were two left.

They were standing next to a pair of corpses, holding a little girl up by the neck. She couldn't be more than ten, judging by her height and the sheer smallness of her frame.

Sierra was stuck by a memory – staring at herself in the mirror, having just been sent to that thrice damned hospital. She had been equally thin. Equally tiny and helpless looking.

"Aw, lookie here, the little mudblood's crying! They've got no spine, none of them..." One of the Death Eaters taunted. "But hey, maybe she'll make a good bedwarmer for my son when she gets older, what do you think?"

His partner laughed, but not for long. A spike impaled him through the back of the head, splitting it in half. His body danced awkwardly for a moment before falling to the ground.

The first man dropped the little girl and whirled around to come face to face with Sierra. The girl's eyes were narrowed into slits. So great was her rage that she had unconsciously upgraded her illusionist spell, taking her from corpselike to demonic.

The Death Eater – Darien Nott – didn't realize he was looking at a fourteen year old girl. (albiet, an extremely dangerous fourteen year old). He was staring at a hideous image of black ragged wings, clawed hands, blood soaked jagged teeth in an all too wide grimace. Black runes on her skin, blood and gore spread all over her body. She was holding a skull in one hand.

The man let out a very undignified scream – the last sound he'd ever make before Sierra summoned every small sharp object in the entire area and sent them all flying at him. He was stabbed with so many that his body danced for a minute, loosing all its poise and dignity until it became more akin to a thoroughly mangled vodoo doll.

Her enemies finally spent, Sierra forced herself to break the illusion, to store away all that rage for another time. Carefully she stepped through the blood soaked mud and crouched down in front of the little girl.

She could see two bodies, both people looked like the kid. Must be the parents. They were further away, they must have tried to protect her once they realized they couldn't get away.

"Hey kid." The girl was curled up, sobbing into her knees. Sierra couldn't blame her for it. "Kid, look at me. You're fine now. You're safe."

The girl sniffs and looked up at Sierra with wide blue eyes. Her hair is a messy black with purple dyed in. She's wearing muggle clothes; that must be why the Death munchers singled her out. She had dark brown skin, and upon closer look she seemed even smaller than before.

"Kid, come here." Sierra said. The kid didn't move, tears still falling, just staring at her. It was probably shock. Internally, she almost wished she could switch over control to Helen at a whim; she would be much better here. She could cry with the kid, give her comfort and candy and promise her the sun would come up tomorrow. This wasn't stuff she was very practices with.

Letting out a slow breath, Sierra reached over and picked the girl up. She squirmed at first, like a kitten that didn't want to be carried, but she went limp quickly – probably didn't have the strength to struggle after tonight. With the kid in her arms, Sierra began making her way back towards the portkey point.

****A short time later****

"Oh god..." Was all Arthur had to say when he saw the girl Sierra was carrying. Hermione, mother hen that she was, immediately scrambled over to check her friend's passenger for injuries. Ginny looked like she might cry with pity; she was probably reliving the damned diary incident in her head all over again. Ron looked like he was afraid to say anything.

"We should probably go to the hospital." Sierra said in what she hoped was a less venomous than normal for her. She had taken vengeance in the kid's stead, but in the health department she wasn't of any use.

Arthur nodded, but before they could even move a voice bellowed, "WEASLEY!"

A moment later, listening to these idiot government men babble about the skull in the sky (really, who gave a shit? You mean this wouldn't be an emergency if someone hadn't put an imaginary head in the sky) and demanding to know if one of them had done it, Sierra's patience was far past it's end.

"So it's not the clear riot and murder that you're investigating, it's the scary firework." She scathed, causing Crouch's head to whip around and stare at her for daring to interrupt him. "Meanwhile, here I am holding a kid who's just been orphaned and _needs to go to a fucking hospital. _How about you go and make yourselves useful over there-" She jerked her head in the direction of the destroyed fields "while we try to save a life here?"

"Which of you conjured it!"

"Are you fucking kidding me? Are you retarded? You're standing in front of two muggleborns, a family of blood traitors, and the one Voldemort-" They all flinched at the name, for fuck's sake it was a _name _and not even a clever one at that. It was something a six year old would come up with when they were trying to sound smart. "-personally tried to murder. You're not going to find one of his sycophants here! If that clears everything up, _now _can I take this girl to the goddamned hospital?"

She didn't wait for an answer, she stormed off still holding the little scrap in her arms. To her mixed surprise and pleasure, Hermione, Hannah and Ginny were directly on her heels.

**End Chapter**

**And we haven't even gotten to the big bomb yet. Oh, this year is going to be so much fun...for me and Sierra, that is.**

**Read and Review please!**


	15. Chapter 15

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Sierra: I'm surprised that you haven't broken your brain managing all this.**

**Wanda: (shrugs) I've just got a lot on my mind, I guess. I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 15: The Tri Wizard Tournament**

The girl's name was Leona Darkstalker. She was a half blood who grew up exclusively in the mundane world; both her parents were muggleborn. She wasn't badly hurt, physically at least, but the fact was that she didn't have any living family after the incident.

Sirius offered to foster her. Since he was taking care of Helen, who clearly adored him, the magic orphanage just shrugged and gave him the papers to sign.

Poor Leona was distraught, and spent a lot of time crying. Helen and Ginny both showered her with affection, toys and candy in an attempt to take her mind off the loss itself and help her grieve. Leona took a liking to them, but she was still sunk in grief.

Sirius was very sweet on her. He compared his own family experience and told her that she was lucky to have a family that loved her as much as hers had. Helen chimed in with her own experience.

"We're all orphans and lost things in Grimmauld Place." Sirius told her as he brushed away her tears one night. "They loved you very much, and I'm sure they want you to be happy. I can't replace them, I recognize that – but I hope I can give you a home where you can be happy."

Leona gave him a watery smile and glomped onto him in response. Sirius rubbed her back and read poetry to her until she fell asleep.

Now, Leona's first year at Hogwarts coincided with Helen's fourth, so she stayed in the compartment with the last Potter, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Hannah as they made their way to the school. She was in a bit better cheer, talking with Ginny about her favourite movies. Helen just listened and smiled during the conversation about Star Wars.

It was a pity the wizards didn't have TV. They were missing out on a lot!

****At the Feast****

The Tri Wizard Tournament.

Helen thought the whole thing sounded rather frightening; whatever Ron might think she wouldn't put her name in when it rolled around again in three years. Why would anyone want to risk their lives for a purse full of gold? It was cold and hard; it couldn't give you laughter and happiness and family and friends; not real ones anyway. What good was that?

Ron seemed to find the idea of Eternal Glory exciting. Helen didn't really understand it, though Hermione had a knowing frown on her face.

Leona, who was sorted into Gryffindor just before the announcement, pouted slightly when she heard you could only enter the tournament if you were seventeen or older. Hermione smiled and ruffled her hair, causing her to swat at the older girl and mock glare at her.

Helen figured that if there was something nice about the tournament, it was that she could watch other people do amazing things. Imagine the spectacle!

Hopefully, no one would die...Hannah said that it had originally been discontinued because it caused the deaths of most of its participants. You had to face monsters and dangerous obstacles, and no one was allowed to help you unless you forfeited.

"Hopefully it will be different now," Hannah said to Helen, her voice laced with concern. "but it was really cutthroat back in the day. I'm glad none of us are old enough to participate."

Helen shivered while Hermione nodded in grim agreement. Ron gave no indication he could hear, however.

"At least if there's trouble this year, we'll be able to see it coming," Ginny said somewhat optimistically.

Hermione cringed. "Please don't say things like that, Ginny..." When the younger redhead gave him an odd look, the bookworm elaborated, "Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. After a supposed mass murderer, a giant killer snake and the dark lord himself, I'd rather not tempt fate."

****At the Choosing Ceremony****

"The Hogwarts Champion is...Cedric Diggory!"

"The Beaxbatons Champion is...Fleur Delcaur!"

"The Drumstrang Champion is...Viktor Krum!"

Helen cheered and clapped along with everyone else as the three chosen students strutted out of the room, full of excitement for their possible futures. It was nice that the Hogwarts champion was someone other than a Gryffindor for once; Hannah certainly looked excited.

Cedric was a nice guy; one of the few people who could claim to be well liked among all four houses. Even the Slytherins would be pleased with using him as a representative of their school.

Leona gave an impressive yawn; the choosing ceremony had taken place long after dinner. She leaned against Helen's shoulder, eyes closed, muttering about being bored. Ginny smiled down at her.

Suddenly, the goblet flared once again. Dumbledore turned in alarm, the lights flickering in the room. The goblet's fire turned purple, and spat up another page.

Dumbledore caught it and read aloud, "Potter, Helen."

Silence reigned over the school for a long moment. Helen wondered if it was a joke, but when everyone turned to stare at her, confusion and shock sank in.

"What?" She squeaked, her voice echoing through the room. "But...sir...this must be a mistake!"

Dumbledore shook his head slightly and gestured for her to follow him. Helen stood up, shell shocked, and was still looking around in confusion as she made her way through the crowd. She knew she hadn't put her name in – she couldn't have! Even Fred and George couldn't sneak around the line that had been put around it.

She didn't want to go anyway!

Helen shivered as her consciousness receded. Sierra blinked, looked over her shoulder as McGonagall uneasily ushered her in, and cursed under her breath.

****In the back room****

"I didn't do it." Sierra snapped when the three champions stared at her. "I didn't put my name in."

"Then why are you here?" Fleur demanded.

"I don't know!" Sierra growled. "If I had to guess, I'd say someone else put it in. It's not like a fourth year could have done anything like that!"

_I could have,_ she thought, _if I honestly thought it was worth it. Which I don't._

Dumbledore and the other teachers came rushing in. The older man grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted in her face, "DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE?!"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Sierra shouted back, her magic flaring. Dumbledore was nearly thrown backwards; everyone stared at Sierra who backed up, holding her left shoulder with one hand and glaring around the room.

"Don't touch me," She spat. "I didn't do anything. I didn't put my name in!"

"We were under the impression that your Age Line would keep out younger contestants, Dumbledore," Drumstrang Professor Igor Karkeroff said with a fixed smile on his face. "Otherwise, we would, of course, have brought a wider selection of students from our own school."

"Of course it happens to her," Professor Snape muttered. "It always happens around her."

Sierra was severely tempted to flip him off at that, but forced herself to hold back while the teachers continued talking.

"Thank you, Severus." Dumbledore said firmly.

"Ah, but o course she's lying!" Madam Maxine said loudly.

"And how is that possible?" Sierra snapped. "I suppose I _flew _across the age line? Fred and George tried that and turned into Santa Clause clones."

"Dumbly-dorr must have made a mistake," Maxine insisted.

Sierra shoved her hands in her pockets, scowling. The teachers went on to speak of her like she wasn't even present; discussing 'motives' and 'clear foul play'. Karkeroff tried to smooth talk Barty Crouch and Ludo Bagman to let her out of the tournament (which she didn't mind), and when they refused to budge attempted to get more students chosen.

Barty wouldn't budge. "The tournament constitutes a binding magical contract. Helen Potter is not a contestant of the Tri Wizard Tournament."

"You mean the Quad Wizard Tournament?" Sierra asked scathingly. When Barty started and turned towards her, she went on, "Since there are _four _people in a _three _contestant limited tournament? Something is so stupidly, _obviously _wrong that I absolutely refuse to believe there's nothing you can do about it."

"It's a _binding magical contract-_"

"-for a Junior sports event? Do you have any idea how asinine that sounds? For god's sake, this isn't some fight for the future of the world, it's an inter school dick measuring contest! What kind of idiot doesn't have any sort of emergency stop when someone has obviously cheated?" Sierra crossed her arms, with an expression of utmost contempt in her eyes.

Viktor was giving her an impressed look from the side. Cedric looked concerned, Fleur surprised.

"Why wouldn't you attempt to enter?" Ludo asked, as if he couldn't comprehend such a thing. "Thousands of galleons in gold, eternal glory-"

Sierra let out a bark of laughter. "What good will eternal glory or money do me if my rotted corpse is being fed to a manticore?" She demanded.

McGonagall looked like she couldn't agree more, but Dumbledore shook his head. "I'm sorry, my dear."

"Again. 'sorry' isn't going to do me much good if I get fed into a meat grinder considering I'm a _fourteen year old _being sent into a tournament where only _eighteen and over _students are allowed to participate!" Sierra snapped. "Bloody hell, how is this a mystery? The goblet is a magical item of huge power, how many wizards capable of overwhelming it are in the school right now?"

The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher – some kook named Mad Eye Moody – chuckled at this. "This girl is smart." He said. "This girl's smarter then most of you. She's asking all the right questions."

"Is your paranoia infecting younger students, Moody?" Karkeroff asked coldly. "I wonder if this is your influence speaking through this girl-who-lived's mouth."

Sierra was ready to cuss the man out, but she didn't quite get the chance before the Headmaster was speaking again.

"Alastar has my complete trust, Karkeroff." Dumbledore said firmly.

"You should save your trust for the girl." Moody said. "The girl's got it right, Dumbledore. You should listen to her. Or this situation, already spinning out of your control, is going to go straight to hell."

Sierra didn't quite trust Mad Eye – he was a bit too twitchy – but he was shaping up to be her favourite one year instructor.

Dumbledore, Crouch and Barty refused to give her any satisfying reason as to why they couldn't pull her out. They just leaned on the weak 'binding contract' bull and insisted she had to.

_Fine. I will, then. But you may not like what you see._

**End Chapter**

**Read and Review please!**


	16. Chapter 16

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter...enjoy!**

**Chapter 16: Dragon**

Sierra was not happy.

Virtually kept in the driver's seat by the insanely dangerous tournament she was facing, (Helen wouldn't make it past the first task. There was no way.) Sierra decided to go about figuring how she was going to deal with the tasks.

Hagrid showed her that the first one involved dragons.

_NOPE, NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS SCENARIO, INDEED_. _LITTLE KIDS FIGHT DRAGONS ALL THE FUCKING TIME!_ Sierra thought after looking at the creatures.

Now, Sierra kind of liked dragons. They were big, badass and the most dangerous creatures that ever lived. They had a certain majesty to them that made her sympathetic with them.

_This must be a load of bullshit – one minute, you're minding your own business, waiting for your eggs to hatch. The next, some assholes with wands knock you out, chain you up and drag you out to an arena. Then, they make you wait for days before giving you one single solitary dumbass eighteen year old to eat. If I was in their (lack of) shoes, I'd be pretty pissed off. _

So in the interest of avoiding either becoming bacon or killing one of the few creatures in the world she admired, Sierra holed up in the library in the days prior to the First Task.

That, and many of the other kids were being exceptionally obnoxious. Most of them snobbily avoided her or looked down at her, which she initially tolerated with equal coldness.

But then there had been the "Potter Sinks Badges" debacle – which resulted in twenty Slytherins, ten Hufflepuffs and five Ravenclaws being hospitalized for the better part of a week. Theodore Nott had to be transferred to St Mugos to deal with his fractured skull.

It was a good thing Hogwarts had a 'minor earthquake' at that moment; keeping incompetent teachers from asking too many inconvenient questions.

This was the wonderful thing about having an alter ego who wouldn't hurt a fly even if it harassed her all night; she had built in deniability.

That, and the Hogwarts staff were _astonishingly _stupid when it came to their students – being out after curfew got you a night in the monster-infested woods, but using racial slurs only incurred a 10-20 points loss for the house. Not to mention Sierra had gotten away with violent assault and outright killed a man already without any of them being the wiser.

_I have an inkling why a number of Dark Wizards graduated from _this _school as opposed to literally any other._

Regardless, Sierra learned quite a bit about dragons with Hermione, Ginny, Luna and Hannah's help, and in the end she came up with a solution for her first task problem.

Dragons respected strength. If you could outright repel it or stand your ground against an assault of dragonfire, the dragon would step back and communicate with you. Many dragon species were old enough to know the human language – most wizards didn't know this because they were too busy using them as livestock or killing them for bragging rights.

An awesome display of power could even convince the dragon to aide you in a quest. Helga Hufflepuff's most famous feat was doing just that – facing down the eldest dragon in existence and earning his admiration.

So when she returned to find Hogwarts under siege by an Order of the most powerful Dark Wizards of that time, she called upon her new friend. Helga was the most loving and gentle of the quartet, famously hating violence. However, whenever her students or children were threatened, she was the first to attack, claws out.

The result? 200,000 dead dark wizards, a scorch field around Hogwarts the size of three football fields in every direction, and the Dark Order destroyed so completely it was forgotten within a single generation.

Yes, sweet, gentle Hufflepuff had the a body count so huge it left all her fellow founders in the dust. Not Slytherin or Gryffindor.

And yet some idiots (hint hint, Malfoy) still said they'd 'leave' if they were sorted into Hufflepuff.

Hermione had no idea how right she was when she said, "Most wizards don't have an ounce of logic." That would probably explain why they were still in the dark ages.

Regardless of all that, Sierra walked into her first interview with a dark aura.

Well, 'walked' wasn't a good word. More like furiously and unwillingly dragged by Dumbledore to play nice to a tabloid muckraker who was paid to be sensational, not to tell the truth. A Tabloid muckraker, who would sell their soul for the cheapest, dirtiest stories available, not caring who they hurt when they published their 'work'.

Rita Skeeter was some hideous amalgamation of every tabloid artist who had come around the mental hospital to write 'shocking expose' about the patients. She reached Lockhart levels of douchbaggery just by interviewing Cedric. (she didn't even bother to spell his name right, among other things.) Sierra was silently debating whether or not she'd be let off if she murdered the woman in public as Fleur and Krum both went through their interviews.

Krum was the only one who outwardly looked as unhappy about the interviews as Sierra herself was. He was a Quidditch star; he'd seen enough of her type to know where this was going.

Finally, Sierra herself was 'invited' into the tent. Skeeter was waiting there with her hideous makeup and plastered on way-too-wide smile, gesturing for her to sit. Sierra, glowering the whole while, did so.

"So, how did you come to enter the tournament?"

"You're asking the wrong person." Sierra answered tersely. "I was in the library with a friend of mine when the submissions were happening. Not that anyone has listened to me."

"Oh? Is that so?"

"Yes. But don't take _my _word for it, take the word that the goblet is a powerful magical object yet as somehow entered a fourth contestant into a tournament only meant for three." Sierra said with a sigh, leaning back against the chair. Did this read as a gesture of defeat or emotional exhaustion? She wasn't really good at those either.

Rita tittered slightly at this; clearly she didn't believe that – or she just thought saying something different would be a better story. Silently Sierra swore that when she read the paper tomorrow, she was definitely going to kill someone.

Come to think of it, wasn't this skeeter bitch the same one who wrote the article on the aftermath of the Quidditch World Cup? Perhaps keeping an eye on her would be a good idea...if Rita managed to connect them, it would raise some eyebrows even if it was just tabloid tomfoolery.

And Sierra wasn't about to let go of her comfortable anonymity.

The rest of the interview was a bit muddled – Sierra was mostly focusing on clutching the edges of her chair until her knuckles turned white to suppress her scathing contempt and desire to kill the woman in front of her. She could feel her magic thrumming under her skin, begging to be unleashed. Whenever her murderous instincts arose, they were difficult to suppress.

Sierra wondered about that sometimes. Usually she could maintain a face of cold indifference, or even feasibly convince others that she was Helen. But her anger always seemed to swamp any rational thought she might possess. Usually she was content to engulf herself in it, but when she had to play nice and pretend to smile its sheer power was somewhat unnerving.

The answers she gave Skeeter for the questions were clear cut, simple and flat. It wouldn't be easy to make things up when what you say doesn't leave much to interpretation. Some experience with this sort of people was, as always, helpful.

Though when Sierra was finally released from Skeeter's clutches, she decided then and there that if Dumbledore tried to force her into another interview, then the famous man in Britain be damned – he'd be spending tomorrow at the bottom of the lake.

****~The Next Day~****

So the next day, the tournament started. Sierra was both going last, and she had the most vicious of all the dragons.

As you do.

_Set up, it's a bloody set up, are all these people fucking _blind, deaf and dumb!? _...that would probably explain a lot. Must be all the damned inbreeding. _

Sierra had a number of tricks in mind for her task. The Horntail, being the most aggressive, would want her to attack head on if she intended to speak to it.

_That's just fine. It's a nuisance to constantly hide how powerful I am...and I don't even need to worry about Helen...people will think this is just a traumatic power awakening brought on by a situation too terrible for her fragile little heart. _

_Or at least, she's smart enough to play it off like that. From what I can gather, Helen is soft but not completely stupid._

Sierra waited for her turn, listening to how the other champions went about their tasks. Fleur and Cedric both distracted their dragons, while Krum used a cheap shot to send the dragon backwards. Crushed half his eggs, but completed the task.

Finally, she was called out.

Sierra strode out into the arena with her head held high. _Walk tall. Dragons only respect strength and courage._ Bagman announced her and the task began.

For a moment, Sierra stood still, waiting. The Horntail roared in challenge. At this, Sierra stepped around and stood directly in front of it. A gasp went through the stands.

"Don't mind them, Your Grace." Sierra said, her voice loud and clear. Dragon mothers were always called Queens among their own kind. "They're all cowards."

The Horntail paused and stared down at her with its slitted eyes. "We've both been forced into this in chains." Sierra continued. "Tricked, drugged and pressured for their amusement."

The Horntail growled threateningly, dropping onto all fours and flaring her wings. Her eyes were definitely scornful.

Sierra knew why – Fleur and Cedric's successes would have been seen as cowardly and insulting. They had taken advantage of the other dragon's weakness, restrains and confusion in order to take the egg.

"These wizards are complacent in their supposed superiority," Sierra went on, drawing her wand before tossing it aside. Another stunned gasp from the crowd. After all, these wizards were all bloody helpless without the sticks. It was ridiculous. "Yet they insist on chaining, drugging and deriding you before using your confusion as entertainment."

She took a step backwards into a fighting stance and blasted the chains restraining the dragon into dust.

Now the crowd was screaming. Sierra cast a sonorus on her throat so the Horntail could hear her above the racket. "I am not a coward, Your Grace. If we must fight, we fight on equal terms!"

Sierra bowed her head before saying, "Your move, milady."

The Horntail's expression changed slightly. She looked almost impressed.

Then the torrent of flame erupted from her throat.

Sierra had expected that and reached inside for her magic. She brought up her usual shield, but changed its properties – instead of a simple invisible barrier, it was a wall of water. Most of it evaporated, sending steam and sprays of boiling liquid in every direction.

Sierra then brought the water into a freezing stream and fired it back at her opponent.

The horntail flared her wings in front of her muzzle to avoid swallowing the water – a chilled throat would cause weaker flames. The dragon lunged forward and swiped at its small opponent.

Sierra summoned a sword in response.

It was a silver and emerald handled blade – a very ornate one, something you'd expect to see in a Medieval museum as a possession of some ancient king. Sierra hadn't seen it before, but it felt familiar the moment she touched it.

Sierra swung the blade up and, reinforcing her feet, blocked the talons before they could shred her. She roared before pushing back with all her might, causing the dragon to back up a step before taking another swipe. Sierra defended and attacked, stepping forward and backwards as she needed to before her adversary returned to the flames.

This time, Sierra teleported out of the way, landing to the dragon's side still in her vision. The queen turned and lashed out again. When she was blocked by the shield, the queen snorted and took to the sky.

Sierra, her heart pounding from exhilaration, found herself grinning. All this time, holding herself back, contained in a little prison, she didn't have to hide anymore. This was incredible. This was _invigorating!_ She had never been in a real fight before, never. And it was just getting better.

The Horntail swooped down at her from above. This time, Sierra couldn't afford to just defend – the sheer force alone would throw her several feet backwards. So she attacked, slowing the beast just enough to grab onto her wing and sling herself onto the back.

Her opponent roared in rage at being outsmarted. Sierra then had to use all her magic to maintain her grip on the dragon as her scales grew super hot and she bucked and flew thousands of feet above the ground in an attempt to dislodge her unwelcome passanger.

Finally Sierra pulled herself onto the dragon's head and thrust her sword just inches before one of her eyes. The Queen, sensing imminent death, stopped her struggle.

"_**...I YIELD.**_"

The Queen's voice echoed through the air like the ring of a gong. Sierra gasped when she heard it; her head was beginning to spin from the altitude. A few more minutes and she'd pass out.

The Horntail flew slowly back down to the stadium. The crowd was still there – perhaps to petrified to move – only for a bunch to scream when she landed. Sierra slid onto the ground, gasping for air and stumbling about thanks to vertigo.

The Horntail shifted onto her haunches and bowed her head, mimicking the gesture Sierra had made at the beginning of the match. _**"I YIELD, YOUNG ONE. FOR A TWO LEGGED, YOU SHOW INCREDIBLE STRENGTH IN SPIRIT AND MAGIC."**_

You could tell none of the students had heard a dragon speak before, because they stopped screaming. Oh, and at least a fourth of them passed out.

Sierra placed her sword on the ground and replied, "You flatter me, Your Grace. Had you continued to struggle for a minute longer, and I would have fallen."

"_**YET AS YOU SAID, I AM NOT AT FULL STRENGTH. MY MUSCLES ARE WEAK FROM THE POISON INJECTED IN MY VEINS TO MAKE ME DOCILE. YOU ARE TOO YOUNG TO HAVE GROWN INTO YOUR FULL POWER. TO THAT END, WE ARE EQUALS – AND TO THAT END, I WOULD RATHER WAIT UNTIL I AM STRONG, AND YOU ARE OLDER, BEFORE I ATTEMPT TO FLING YOU FROM MY BACK."**_ The Horntail flicked her bladed wings at this. _**"WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"**_

"Sierra Elaine." She didn't add 'Potter' to the end of that. It just didn't sound right, somehow.

"_**THE GIANTS CALL ME AMA''TERASU, THE SUN BORN. MY KIND CALL ME SOLAR ESSCENCE." **_The Horntail said.

Sierra faintly heard Hermione gasp in astonishment inside the crowd. Likely only she and another handful knew the significance of Solar Essence offering her name to a human.

"_**OUR BATTLE IS PREMATURE, DRAGONBORN SIERRA ELAINE. FOR WHAT CAUSE DO THE STICK WIELDERS HAVE TO SEND YOU AGAINST ME?**_" Solar Essence asked.

Sierra had a feeling 'Stick Wielders' translated out to a pretty severe insult, given the inflection the mighty dragon put on the syllables. "There is a false egg in your nest." She said. "The purpose was for me to attempt to retrieve it from you without loosing my life."

"_**THIS ONE, I PRESUME." **_Solar Essence grabbed the golden egg in her claws, denting it, before placing it at Sierra's feet. **_"THE STICK WIELDERS PRESUMED ME STUPID ENOUGH TO BE UNABLE TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MY BLOOD BORN CHILDREN AND THEIR INANE TOYS. I FOUGHT TO REMIND THEM THAT I AM NO BEAST THEY CAN COW TO THEIR WHIMS. BUT BY YOUR COURAGE, DRAGONBORN, I SPARE THEM MY WRATH. YOU HAVE FRIENDS HERE, DO YOU NOT?"_**

"Indeed. Your kindness is awe inspiring, Queen Ama'terasu." Sierra said quietly, picking up the egg. "That is more than I believe many of my own kind would have done in your place. I wonder sometimes who the true beasts are."

Solar Essence barked, a sound of amusement and admiration. With one claw, she took her true eggs from the nest. _**"YOU'RE A RARE HUMAN, SIERRA ELAINE. I HOPE TO SEE YOU AGAIN IN SEVERAL WINTERS TIME."**_

With that, the Queen took to the sky and flew away. Sierra took the egg and told the stunned stupid judges, "this task is over," before calmly and casually walking towards the medical tent.

**End Chapter**

**Like. a. boss. This is how I see my dragons - intelligent, badass, and proudly warriorlike. Just like Charizard in the Pokemon Anime. **

**Read and Review please!**


	17. Chapter 17

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: Obligatory Yule Ball chapter is obligatory.**

**Tyene: God, imagine if Sierra had been the one to dance instead of Helen. We all dodged a bullet there. **

**Wanda: (shudders at the thought) I do not own Harry Potter.**

**Chapter 17: Yule Ball Panic**

Viktor Krum sat in the corner of the library, holding a book on Ancient Runes in his hands. He wasn't reading it, though. He was watching a slender redhead talk with her friends.

Helen Potter had surprised him, to put it mildly. At first, he had thought with absolute certainty that her school was giving her up for dead when her name came out of the goblet. She was too quiet, too nervous, too timid, too shy to possibly survive the tasks heading her way.

And then she Challenged her dragon, and was dubbed a Dragonborn.

Bulgaria had some legends regarding the dragonborn – witches and wizards who had left society and joined their power with the dragons of the mountains and the cold. Helga Hufflepuff was the first among them, but she was far from the last. Dragonborn were both admired and feared, for good reason. They were often some of the most powerful magic users who ever lived.

And yet Helen didn't wield her new authority and fearful respect like a blade or a whip, something that Viktor had come to expect after years at Drumstrang. Instead, she seemed to shy away from it, simply happy she had gotten through the task without anyone getting severely hurt.

She was some strange marriage between gentleness and warrior's spirit, compassion and rage. She existed in the balance, swinging between them like a pendulum.

Viktor liked that about Helen. For that reason, he wanted to ask her to the Yule Ball.

But going about this was proving to be a bit more challenging then he expected. Helen, while remaining removed from his frothing fangirl posse, was so intimidated by him (and older boys in general) that she all but ran away when the four champions were told about the ball.

Trying to find a moment where she was alone wasn't easy either – normally her friends were clustered around her, either talking with her about something or just having fun.

Cedric, having seen it, remarked that he had considerable trouble asking his girlfriend Cho out for the first time as well. "Women," he said with mock despair, "they always travel in packs, so you can feel their compound disapproval when you approach."

The younger redhead – Viktor only knew that she was one of the Weasleys – glanced over in his direction, before tapping Helen on the shoulder. Helen looked at her in surprise; the Weasley girl smiled and pointed over in Viktor's direction.

Viktor immediately lowered his eyes to his book, annoyed that he had been noticed.

**With Helen**

The Yule Ball was putting Helen's nerves on edge.

She was grateful to Sierra for carrying her through the first task, but she was beginning to wish that her mental sister would also get her through the ball.

A _ball_! With dancing and pretty dresses and singing and partners...! She didn't know how to dance, she'd never worn a dress before, who would even go with her...?! she had never done anything like this; Uncle Vernon had gone to some fancy dinner parties but Helen had been explicitly forbidden from coming along.

So when McGonagall had dropped the bomb that she needed a partner for the dance, Helen had all but panicked. At first, she had thought of asking Ron, but immediately discarded it – he was her first friend, it would be _weird _to dance with him! And all the rest of her friends were girls.

Helen flushed when she realized how that sounded in her head. _N-not that there's anything _wrong _with that...! I-I just don't feel like that about any of them. They're just my friends...that would be strange..._

Helen sighed and flopped down on a chair in the library. No matter how she looked at this situation, she couldn't think of anyone she'd feel comfortable asking to dance with her. And she _had _to go, no matter what, because the Champions lead the dance.

"Helen Potter?"

Helen squeaked and looked up from her despair. Viktor Krum had crossed the library to join her. She felt her face heat up. Ginny had told her that he was watching her – she had thought her friend was confused. There was no way!

"H-Hello, Viktor." Helen said, mustering a smile. "Do you like our library?"

"It's very informative." Viktor answered easily, sitting down on the chair across from her. Helen nervously clasped her hands together. "Is something the matter? You seem troubled."

"The dance is going to be a disaster." Helen moped. "I've never danced before, _ever_, and I can't imagine who I'd even ask."

Viktor's brow furrowed. "Does dancing frighten you? You faced down a dragon."

"That was different!" Helen said, flustered. "I mean, there I was only vulnerable as long as I couldn't use magic to protect myself...! Here, I'll have to go out and dance, something I've never done, something very public and personal..." She sighed and hung her head. "I'm going to utterly embarrass myself."

"Not necessarily." Viktor said. "If someone showed you how to dance, no one would be able to tell the difference, don't you think?"

When Helen looked up at him, he said, "I was wondering, would you do me the pleasure of being my dance partner at the ball?"

Helen squeaked like a mouse and stared at him, eyes wide as saucers. "M-Me?"

"You're a lovely person, Helen. I've noticed how you act both in the tournament and out of it and I think you're very pleasant and kindhearted. My other options for the dance are social ladder climbers who are only interested in my fame, but you've treated me normally and as an equal." Viktor said honestly. "If you'd like, I would show you how to dance."

Helen felt herself blushing fiercely. "Oh, t-thank you Viktor. I'm not sure what to say...!"

"You don't have to say anything. I'm glad I can help you."

**The Yule Ball**

Hannah assisted in getting Hermione, Helen and Ginny dresses for the ball.

Ginny was going with an outgoing kid named Colin Creevy. He was very excitable, very well read and he loved fairy tales. Ginny got along with him very well, and they were good friends.

Hermione was going with Ron. Helen had cheered after her incessant insistence finally got Ron to ask Hermione out. She knew that Ron was glowing to like Hermione more ever since they first got to know each other, so nothing was better than seeing them get closer.

Hannah was going with Neville Longbottom, a shy Gryffindor from their herbology class. Hannah was confident where Neville was nervous. They were a cute couple, but Helen wasn't sure that Hannah would be entirely happy unless Neville started gaining some confidence in himself instead of constantly leaning on her for emotional support.

Ginny stood in front of the mirror in the girl's bathroom, all but beaming as she examined her reflection. "The boy's are all going to drop dead," She said with a grin.

Helen, who never thought she looked very pretty, found herself bobbling her head in agreement and smiling.

Hermione's fritzy hair, after much struggling from Hannah, was tied up in an elegant knot. Her dress was a simple baby blue in colour; its simple design fit her very well. The absence of her book bag also made her look radically different.

Hannah's dress was yellow, and it made her look like a blooming sunflower. The bronze and the gold went together very well; she had braided her hair and woven a blue ribbon through it. While she wasn't half as thin as Helen or Ginny, she was still radiantly beautiful to her friends.

Ginny's dress was a firey ruby red. It was a fairly off the rack model, sitting at just 200 galleons, but it could hardly be called grungy or second hand. The ballgown trailed past her heels, giving her the look of a princess from olden times.

Finally, Helen herself felt like she had never looked so pretty. While her hair wasn't done up, it was immaculately brushed and a small tiara headband topped off the look. Her dress was emerald green – she had always loved that colour – with blue trimming.

"Better then mortal man deserves," Hermione agreed with a grin; it was a uncharacteristic thing for her to say but it showed the confidence they all had in themselves at this moment.

"Well, our 'mortal men' are probably waiting for us." Hannah noted jokingly. "We should never keep such gentlemen waiting."

Helen's nerves threatened to get to her again when they reached the ballroom, but Ginny held her hand and brought her inside. Viktor looked stunning in his red dress suit; he smiled at her and offered her his arm. Helen took it and let him lead her onto the dance floor.

**End Chapter**

**It's always nice to have a pleasant, slow moment in the middle of a Sierra rampage.**

**Read and Review please!**

As he had promised, he walked her through the dance moves. It started as a simple swaying, but as the music continued as the movements grew more fluid Helen felt like she was flying.

It was a good night. A calm before the final storms of that year.


	18. Chapter 18

**Jekyll and Hyde**

_**Sierra: About damn time.**_

**_Wanda: (defensively) Hey, I was on break! I needed to rest my brain, and cumulatives at High school are coming up! I'm sorry, I just needed some time. Merry New Year, everyone!_**

**_Sierra: Humph._**

**_Wanda: I do not own Harry Potter._**

**Chapter 18: The Frozen Waters**

"_**The prospect's black**_

_**Too late, it's gone**_

_**You can't get it back..."**_

Sierra observed the words of the fake egg in an unnerving silence, while internally she added the names of the Tournament supervisors to her List of Death.

What would they take from her? She didn't have many worldly possession that she cared that much for – nothing she'd risk drowning in a lake for. She did have a few people she might risk life and limb for, however.

But who would it be? Ginny? Hermione? Luna? Or Hannah? They wouldn't use Sirius or Remus, oh no no no, they were adults and wouldn't be shackled into a deadly situation for some stupid school tournament.

That left only her closest friends – her _only _friends.

They would choose one of her friends, her affectionate, gentle and trusting friends, who could die with a single mistake on the behalf of the incompetent imbeciles in charge of this.

Or...or they could be under threat at the hands of whoever had arranged her entrance into this farce. They saw her battle with Solar Essence and wanted to try a different tact. Cowards like this always went after 'easy targets'.

Heads were going to fall like rain.

Sierra went through her preparations methodically. She planned a transfiguration partially into a bottle nose dolphin – fast, and powerful despite what some might think given its cutesy appearance. It would allow her to get down quickly, rescue her friend, and get back, preventing any more disasters.

A warming charm would also be necessary...given that they would be swimming in a _Scottish lake _in _February_. Obviously.

Sierra knew how to swim – Hermione had taught her and Ginny during summer break. She briefly wondered if any of her competitors possessed the skill. Everyone at Hogwarts was virtually helpless without their wands, after all.

Sierra stared out her window, twisting a necklace chain in her hands as she considered the task. "Come on...show yourself." She growled at the not-present Tom Riddle. "I know it's you behind this...show your face so I can destroy you once and for all..."

****~Later, at dinner~****

"Where's Ginny?" Sierra asked Hermione, as the Gryffindors were quickly shunted back to their tower.

"I don't know." Hermione said in confusion. "She was right next to me, then Professor McGonagall walked over and said that Professor Dumbledore needed to talk to her."

_So they picked Ginny_. Sierra thought darkly. Her fingernails dug into her palm as a means of keeping herself composed. _Don't worry, Ginny. You won't be below the surface for long._

"Have you gotten ready for the Second Task, Helen?" Hannah asked anxiously. "Are you sure?"

"I'm certain, Hannah. It's sweet that you're worried." Sierra responded calmly. "Ginny must be the 'treasure' I have to rescue. I have a plan; I'm not going to let her get hurt."

Hermione grimaced; clearly she had suspected as much about Ginny being summered to the Headmaster's office. Luna's usually spacy expression became one of mild worry for her first and best friend. Hannah bit her lip and nodded.

****~The Next Day~****

Sierra woke early, and was the first of the four champions down on the docks for the Second Task. Hermione, Hannah and Luna were all in the stands, waving and cheering their support for her.

Remus was with them too – and next to him was sitting a familiar black dog. Sierra's lip twitched into a momentary smile before she returned her attention back to the lake.

Fleur Delacure was the next one to show up – and she looked almost scared, staring at the water as though it were the gateway to death.

Sierra scanned the stands. She saw the blonde Veela's parents in the crowd – the wife in particular looked absolutely terrified, clutching a small teddy bear like a lifeline.

The redhead surprised herself when a spark of rage boiled up in her often cold heart.

_Fuck you, Dumbledore, Crouch, for dragging a little girl into this. You think some shitty tournament to stroke your ego is more important than the safety of a small child?_

Some of the sea creatures were churning near the surface. Sierra glanced at Fleur again. The blonde locked her fingers together, taking a deep breath to psyche herself up for the dive.

Viktor and Cedric showed up a few minutes later. Neither of them were quite as concerned as Fleur; Viktor in particular gave Sierra a small encouraging smile before turning his attention to the lake.

That wasn't to say the two were completely calm; Cedric's shoulders were notably tense.

Sierra closed her eyes as Percy Weasley began the countdown, feeling her magic swirl inside her as she prepared her transformation.

"3...2...1...GO!"

The transformation was painless. The warming charm followed a second later; burning away the icy shock that had set in when she hit the freezing water.

The waters were full of grindylows; they were more violent then usual, attacking the four champions when they reached twenty feet underwater.

Sierra blasted hers away; Fleur on the other hand was having some trouble given her Veela blood. Cedric, good guy that he was, hung back to help her out. Meanwhile, Viktor was slapping aside the vicious little monsters with his shark attributes.

Sierra pressed on forward, seeking out her friend.

The red hair stuck out like gleaming rubies in the dark waters. Sierra locked on to the perch where the four champions were bound. Ginny was there, so was Cho Chang, and a girl who somewhat resembled Viktor – probably a cousin of his.

Twisting and struggling in her bonds was a tiny silver haired girl – Fleur's nine year old sister, Gabrielle. Her charm hadn't been preformed properly, and she was running out of air.

Sierra thrust her fins and hurtled to the perch. The mermen surrounded them, pointing tridents and swords at her for entering their territory.

Sierra glared at them and snarled, "_Displace_!"

The water erupted away from the perch in every direction, forming a circle and leaving the four victims on safe, clear ground.

Gabrielle fell forward, gasping and choking.

Sierra quickly cut down Ginny before walking over to the girl. She pounded on her back, clearing the throat of water before pulling Gabrielle towards her to keep her semi warm. Ginny dazedly made her way over and joined them, gazing in awe up at the walls of water surrounding them.

"How'd you do that?" She asked.

"You can do it to, if you know how." Sierra responded, brushing Gabrielle's hair with her fingers to calm her down. The girl's sobs caused her whole body to shudder. "Can you stand up?"

"I...I want my _mere_...my sister..." Gabrielle sobbed out. "I-I'm _cold_..."

Ginny cut down Cho and the other girl – Amanda Krum. "Then let's get you out of here..."

Sierra turned to the water walls and concentrated. The walls lowered, leaving a pathway straight back to the docks were everyone was staring in awe. The other Contestants had been injured by the grindylows and were already back on the docks.

Fleur sobbed in relief when Sierra handed Gabrielle to her. Ginny, who was holding her friend's hand, smiled in relief. Cho immediately ran into Cedric's arms, fussing over her boyfriend's badly injured arm. Viktor gave Amanda a gentle hug.

Sierra gave the judges a look of pure contempt as the stands broke into cheers, both at the display of power from the hosting school's Dragonborn and at the fact that a little girl hadn't died in a frozen ocean far from home, along with friends of theirs.

****~Later that Evening~****

Dumbledore sat in his office, his head in his hands.

When had Helen become so powerful? All his attempts to lead the girl had been ignored.

Her strange behaviour kept her from being the Golden Girl he had wanted; she was liked, but remained in the background of the school's public conscience.

Her coldness and quiet nature kept her away from him, when he had hoped to establish himself as a grandfatherly figure for her – especially since her home life had been so difficult before she came to school.

And now she was showing a kind of power he had never seen before.

Dumbledore went through the roster of his students idly as he tried to figure out where Helen's surge of power had come from. The girl had surprised him one too many times for his comfort.

While his plans were somewhat still viable, now he was beginning to worry that she would survive the battle with Voldemort at the end of the tournament without the ritual he had been banking on the man using.

His fingers brushed against the text book for the fourth years and frowned. That's strange ... it seemed that there was another girl in Gryffindor Fourth year since he last looked...

He looked down and gasped. The names he saw bounced around his skull, and threatened to give him an aneurysm. All his worldviews came crashing down...

There were two names.

**Helen Lily Evans-Potter.**

**Sierra Elaine Evans-Riddle.**

_**End Chapter**_

_**I don't know how many of you saw that coming, but surprise! Yeah, I've been building up to that for a while - I'll be explaining more of the 'how' on that bombshell when Sierra reaches the Graveyard.**_

_**Read and Review please!**_


	19. Chapter 19

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Wanda: And we are approaching endgame!**

**Sierra: This is getting absurd. You just want to write a Kylo Ren fanfiction, don't you?**

**Wanda: (kicks her in the shin, then ducks the killing curse) Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the brain! I do not own Harry Potter!**

**Chapter 19: Child of Magic**

The third task arrived quickly.

Sierra was keeping an eye on her friends. If Voldemort hadn't struck in the first two tasks, he was guaranteed to do so now. She was prepared for it, and it must be obvious because Ginny and Hannah kept asking her if she was stressed out or not.

When no attacks came, the redhead braced herself for the inevitable battle somewhere in the maze that formed the third task.

Remus and Sirius both came as her parents...what they'd be looking at, Sierra wasn't sure, since the maze wouldn't allow anyone to see past it. (this tournament was truly nonsensical in every way possible.) But she was still happy they had decided to come.

It was a strange feeling; one she found herself welcoming more and more. Perhaps it was because she knew she could trust the people causing it.

Apparently Fleur had befriended Helen in thanks for rescuing Gabrielle; she invited them all to stay at her family's mansion in Paris over the summer...which sounded quite nice, as far as Sierra was concerned. She was getting rather sick of Britain after all this bull...

Dumbledore called in the contestants. Sierra heard Ginny yelling encouragement from the stands; surprising herself again, she turned and waved in response before heading into the deeper maze.

The warmth it gave her was a strength of its own, she realized. She wanted to do well, not just for herself, but for them as well.

****~Later in the Task~****

"Son of a _bitch_." Sierra snarled, glaring down at the unconscious Viktor Krum...who had been under the Imperious curse.

"What's going on?" Cedric asked, flushed. "This isn't right. Something's going on-"

"You _think_?" Sierra snapped, glancing over at him. "Toss up the red sparks and look for Fleur. There's death in this maze, and it wasn't supposed to be there at the start. Do the smart thing – eternal glory won't mean much if you're dead!"

Cedric listened to her, if only because he was concerned for Fleur as well. Sierra then left him to that, seeking out the centre of the maze. She knew what the danger was, and she needed to find it before McGonagall ended the task out of concern for her students...

The tasks were nothing she hadn't faced before – having to destroy some things and answer some obtuse questions the other times.

But eventually she did find the cup. She picked it up, expecting to trigger a portkey – and was swept away to an old graveyard.

When she landed, she was suddenly arrested by terrible pain.

****~At Little Harrington Graveyard~****

Barty Crouch Jr scrambled back from the angel statue. He didn't understand what had happened; in the middle of his resurrection attempt for his master, he had gone to take the blood from Potter. But when the blade cut into her arm, she screamed and a huge magical surge surrounded her.

Barty watched, stunned, as a bone floated up from the grave of Merope Gaunt. It entered the vortex of magic energy, and a second shape took form.

When the vortex subsided, not one, but two girls lay unconscious on the grass.

One was unquestionably Helen Potter. The other girl looked almost identical to her, though her red hair was braided back. They might as well have been twins.

Dazed, Barty gasped when the cauldron split apart, revealing the new body of Voldemort. His master let out a groan, testing out his new body, when his eyes fell upon the two girls.

Alecto Carrow teleported in a moment later. She was holding the book of student names from Hogwarts; she had stolen it during recon of the castle. She and a number of other Death Eaters had taken a look around while the resurrection was being prepared, and she had spotted something she knew the master would be interested in...

"My Lord..."

"What is this?" Voldemort demanded. "I told you to bring me Potter, and her alone..."

"That's the thing, master..." Alecto opened the book to the page regarding the Gryffindor fourth years and showed it to him.

It was one of the only times Voldemort – Tom Riddle – visibly showed his shock before his followers. Stunned, he stared at the name, and then at the girls. "This isn't possible! _This isn't possible!_" He stammered, before shoving Alecto away and approaching the two girls.

He knelt by the girl at the right and turned her over...her magic pulsed once, revealing a familiar emerald sheen to its consistency.

"...How...?"

"...My lord..." Alecto began tentatively, her eyes flickering uneasily between Helen and Sierra. She was thinking of her twin children, Hestia and Flora. In spite of her madness, Alecto loved her twins, and knew the strength of the bond between parent and child. How could her master continue to act against Hogwarts if his child was inside? "...I have a theory..."

"Speak." Tom Riddle snapped, carefully picking Sierra up in his arms before signalling Barty Crouch to do the same for Helen. Neither girl showed any sign of wakefulness; the separation had heavily taxed their magic reserves.

"...It regards your treasures...and Lily Evans's magic..." Alecto paused, waiting for a Crucio. When it never came, she took that as a good sign. "...When you moved to destroy the Potters, your soul was fragmented when the curse backfired. I thought it remained loose, to rejoin you when you returned, but now...it's clear to me that it latched onto the Potter girl."

"Go on." Riddle's voice was oddly flat. He knew that Alecto and her brother were his greatest experts in Soul Magic; they had assisted him in the creation of his later horcruxes. Their advice was invaluable and rarely wrong.

"...The red magic is the sign of Evans's remaining power...she bound her love to her daughter to form a shield... ...I think it saw the extra soul fragment, and thought it was another child, and extended its power and protection."

Alecto took a few steps forward and examined Sierra. The girl didn't have a scar, like Helen. The tall heather haired woman cast a few diagnostic spells over the twin, and when the results showed up, she grimaced in understanding.

"Because of that, the fragment slowly became a child itself, independent of you." Barty made a choked noise of disbelief. "The magic that gave it life designated it the child of you and Lily Evans."

"A muggleborn did all that? After her own death?" Barty asked in shock.

"It's the only way this could be possible." Alecto answered.

"...I have a daughter." Tom Riddle murmured, looking down at Sierra's passive (due to her current state of unconsciousness) face.

Deep inside him, a spark of light flickered to life in the darkness created by the horcruxes. Something long repressed. It was small, and didn't cancel out the evils that now rested there...but now Tom Riddle was a bit more human then he was before.

"...My lord, if I may ask... how are we to adapt to this?" Barty asked uneasily. He had pledged his service to Riddle willingly and happily, but he had never caused any harm to children. He even bore Helen Potter no ill will; he assumed Voldemort, once resurrected, would have nothing to fear from her.

"I have to say, Potter's 'erratic' behaviour makes much more sense now...the two of them had to share one body." Alecto said, half to herself.

"I can't harm my own blood. Salazar Slytherin's blood." Riddle said, walking over to the Tri Wizard cup. "But I caused the death of her mother. She won't join me, I'm certain of it...I have decided. We will wait until Sierra Riddle has left the country."

"Do you think she will?" Alecto asked uncertainly.

"Hah! Given what the fools have done this year to her and her friends? If I were in her place, I would." Barty muttered.

Riddle nodded in agreement, threw the Dark Mark into the sky as a way of calling his people and giving a clear indication of his continued existence before having Sierra and Helen both teleported back to Hogwarts.

**End Chapter**

**It's interesting to attempt to give Voldemort some dimensions in fics because he's rarely allowed to be anything but a paper thin tin pot tyrant in canon. He's more like an advancing wall of magma from a time limit level in a video game than a functional person, and I wonder why his Death Eaters follow someone so obviously unhinged. I'm planning something similar for Lucius Malfoy over in Given, so I'd like to see if this gives Voldemort a little more humanity while keeping his basic levels of craziness in tact.**

**Read and Review please! Next time, Sierra rips Fudge a new one! (get out the popcorn!)**


	20. Chapter 20

**Jekyll and Hyde**

**Tyene: A story finally finished! Maybe you'll actually wait for another one to finish up before writing three more.**

**Wanda: (is binge watching The Clone Wars)**

**Tyene: (glances at the script writing machine) (groans) ...Hopefully. The disclaimer in the first chapter.**

**Chapter 20: Bow Out Gracefully**

Sierra woke up after Helen.

Being separated from her twin at long last initially made her dizzy. She sat up in the Hogwarts infirmary and stared in wonder at her hands. Helen was in a bed next to her and smiled brightly when she heard her twin groan.

"Sierra! You're awake. That's so nice."

Sierra blinked a couple times to refocus her vision; she was still feeling the effects of the magic drain that had given her this new body. "...Helen?" She looked at her twin, rubbing the side of her head. "Fuck, my head hurts."

Helen reached over and picked up a vial on the bedside table. "I had one too; Poppy gave me a potion and left this one for you."

Gratefully, the more cynical redhead accepted the vial and downed it in one gulp. "Thank you," She said. _Thank you_. The words felt nice.

Helen smiled in return. Oftentimes Sierra had wondered how the other girl managed to remain so cheerful and upbeat; now she was beginning to think that regarding the world positively actually gave her more strength.

"...Dumbledore, see to them!"

Both girls looked up in alarm to see that they had guests. Sirius bounded in and sat down between his girls, looking at them in concern. Remus was right behind him, and behind him was Dumbledore and Minister Fudge.

"The children aren't ready for an interrogation, Cornelius-"

"I don't have time to be delicate, Dumbledore! Some lunatic is using the Dark Mark to stir up trouble in my country! I need to know who was responsible!"

"Because I've told you who was involved already, Cornelius."

Sierra frowned. _I don't like the sound of that, _she thought.

Cornelius looked haughty and pissed off. Dumbledore had his trademark 'vague grandfatherly annoyance and disapproval'. Sierra had an inkling that it had something to do with the graveyard they had been transported to.

"What's going on?" Helen asked anxiously. "Is there a problem?"

"The Dark Mark was found at the graveyard the two of you were recovered from." Sirius explained, squeezing his goddaughter's hand in a reassuring way. "Since last night, there have been rumours of people in Death Eater masks approaching that area."

"Death Eaters. So, the guys who attacked the Cup are coming back." Sierra guessed, eyes narrowing as she remembered Leona and the murder of the little girl's parents. "Where's Leona? How's she taking this?"

"She's with Ron and Ginny." Sirius said, glancing over at her and giving her a small smile. Sierra hesitantly returned the gesture – it felt strange but nice; she rarely smiled. "She's a little nervous, but Ginny's keeping her distracted."

Helen let out a small sigh of relief. "that's good to know. Voldemort's already hurt her enough as it is."

Fudge turned purple. "Voldemort has not come back! This is just some random lunatic, lost in his own madness."

Sierra's eye twitched. And since every child in the Riddle family was famous for having difficulty controlling their temper, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and snapped, "Are you willingly blind, or just stupid?"

Fudge sputtered, "What? You foolish child! My judgement of the situation stands; there is no way that Voldemort had returned! Those who served him are either in jail or have returned to society."

Sierra stared at him for a second, before abruptly she burst out laughing. She laughed for a couple of seconds, leaving everyone staring at her, before she said, "Wow, that was the single biggest hunk of bullshit I've ever heard in a few sentences. That was so insanely idiotic and delusional, I wish I could bleach my brain to wash out all the stupid. You dumb fuck, what the hell do you think happened?"

Remus's jaw dropped. Helen looked like she was memorizing new words she hadn't heard before. Sirius, meanwhile, just looked impressed.

"A bunch of huge Moldyshorts fanatics were discovered outside of Azkaban, after the TRI wizard tournament was illegally given a FOURTH member and someone turns up _dead. _Gee, I _fucking_ wonder, is this some sort of _conspiracy_? I don't know, maybe it just can't get under that hideous hat of yours – assuming that _is _a hat, and not a grossly disfigured pimple caused by a massive brain tumour. I swear _every _time your fat gob opens, you lower the collective intelligence of any given room by 5 percent."

Fudge turned purple and made a squeaking noise like a kicked mouse.

Sierra regarded Fudge with supreme contempt for a second before snapping,"If I gave even half a shit, I would try and ram this through your brain with a baseball bat, but after _that _came out of your mouth I'm not even going to bother. Go ahead. Stick your head in the sand like the ostrich you are and earn yourself a Darwin award, just don't expect me to stick around for it and haul your giant ass out of the fire _again_. Frankly, if you believe your own lies, you deserve it."

She got up and took her sister's hand. "Come on, guys. Let's get the hell out of here before everything goes to hell."

"Go where?" Sirius asked as he got up.

"How about the Bahamas? I liked that place." Helen suggested tentatively.

Sierra reached up and ruffled her sister's hair in response. "Sure, sounds nice."

"Wait!" Dumbledore gasped. His plans were falling to pieces as the young Girl Who Lived and Voldemort's daughter moved to leave Britain for good. "You can't go."

Sierra paused and turned to give him a cold look. To the headmaster's shock, he was reminded quite fiercely of not Tom Riddle, but Lily – the look Lily had always given people who had pushed a joke or a comment too far. "Why not?" She asked coldly.

"Because the wizarding world needs you! Voldemort needs to be defeated!"

"...Are you not the fucking 'only one he ever feared?'. Why are you placing all the guilt and the responsibility of defeating a mass murderer on the shoulders of a fourteen year old girl alone? Maybe a world like that deserves to be destroyed."

Helen glanced at Sierra, concern plain in her eyes. Sierra glanced at her and said, "That's what the aurors are for. Protecting people. Isn't that right, _Minister_?"

With that last parting shot, the group left the room. Leaving Fudge to nurse his bruised ego, and Dumbledore to wrap his brain around the fact that he had just seen a Riddle reject power and violence.

What a rare sentence, indeed.

****Later****

Sierra, Helen, Sirius, Remus, the Weasleys, and Hannah all moved to the Bahamas after Voldemort's second return. Dumbledore lead the charge against him, and the stangent and backwards world found itself locked in a permanent stalemate since everyone was so bigoted while the half bloods eventually bolted to relative safety.

**End**

**Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed! You guys are awesome.**


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